Top 165 Quotes & Sayings by Nathaniel Branden

Not a great deal is known about the factors in childhood that doubtless underlie a person's choice of career - I'm talking now about a career to which one is passionately committed, in contradistinction to a career chosen merely as a means of earning a living.

Romantic love can be terrifying. We experience another human being as enormously important to us. So there is surrender - not a surrender to the other person so much as to our feeling for the other person. What is the obstacle? The possibility of loss.

Productive achievement is a consequence and an expression of health and self-esteem, not its cause.

Self-esteem is a powerful force within each of us... Self-esteem is the experience that we are appropriate to life and to the requirements of life.

The United States was the first country in the history of the world to be consciously created out of an idea - and the idea was liberty.

Tell me how a person judges his or her self-esteem, and I will tell you how that person operates at work, in love, in sex, in parenting, in every important aspect of existence - and how high he or she is likely to rise. The reputation you have with yourself - your self-esteem - is the single most important factor for a fulfilling life.

I cannot remember a time when the question of why people behave as they do was not intensely interesting to me. The desire to understand was very important. When I was young, I was aware of the fact that much of the time, the reasons a person gave for his actions were not the actual reasons.

Self esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.

If we are happy within ourselves, we don't accept or demand that our partner should fulfill every need. We need to be comfortable with our own company.

There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity.

Live with integrity, respect the rights of other people, and follow your own bliss.

Between the ages of 24 and 27, I read Freud's complete works, everything that had been translated into English. It was very stimulating intellectually. But I did not accept his view of neurosis or of human nature.

A woman in love will do almost anything for a man, except give up the desire to improve him.

The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.

When I was a child, I felt at times that I had been born into an insane asylum, that much of human life appeared to be an insane asylum. It was bewildering.

In a world in which the total of human knowledge is doubling about every ten years, our security can rest only on our ability to learn.

To love a person is to know and love the person. But we can pick up an enormous amount about another human being just by exchanging a couple of sentences. It's not yet knowledge; it's an intuition that motivates you to want to find out more.

Of all the nonsense written about love, none is more absurd than the notion that ideal love is selfless. To love is to see myself in you and to wish to celebrate myself with you. What I love is the embodiment of my values in another person. Love is an act of self-assertion, self-expression and a celebration of being alive.

The highest compliment one can be paid by another human being is to be told: 'Because of what you are, you are essential to my happiness.'

One of the hardest expressions of self-assertiveness is challenging your limiting beliefs.

We tend to feel most comfortable, "most at home", with people whose self esteem level resembles our own.

Your choices have psychological consequences. The way you choose to deal with reality, truth, facts - your choice to honor or dishonor your own perceptions - registers in your mind, for good or for bad, and either confirms and strengthens your self-esteem or undermines and weakens it.

For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.

How do we keep our inner fire alive? Two things, at minimum, are needed: an ability to appreciate the positives in our life – and a commitment to action. Every day, it's important to ask and answer these questions: ‘What's good in my life?’ and ‘What needs to be done?

It is impressive to see a person who has been battered by life in many ways, who is torn by a variety of unsolved problems, who may be alienated from many aspects of the self-but who is still fighting, still struggling, still striving to find the path to a fulfilling existence, moved by the wisdom of knowing, "I am more than my problems."

The more you surrender to the fear of someone's disapproval, the more you lose face in your own eyes, and the more desperate you become for someone's approval. Within you is a void that should have been filled by self-esteem. When you attempt to fill it with the approval of others instead, the void grows deeper and the hunger for acceptance and approval grows stronger. The only solution is to summon the courage to honor your own judgment, frightening though that may be in the beginning.

For children mastery entails struggle. This means they must be permitted to struggle. If parents inappropriately step in to "help"-out of impatience or solicitude-they sabotage important learning. Among other things, the child is unlikely to discover the advantages of perseverance and self-discipline.

Fear and pain should be treated as signals not to close our eyes but to open them wider.

A bully hides his fears with fake bravado. That is the opposite of self-assertiveness.

Taking on responsibilities that properly belong to someone else means behaving irresponsibly toward yourself. You need to know where you end and someone else begins. You need to understand boundaries. You need to know what is and is not up to you, what is and is not in your control, what is and is not your responsibility.

Most of us are taught from an early age to pay far more attention to signals coming from other people than from within. We are encouraged to ignore our own needs and wants and to concentrate on living up to others expectations.

Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.

If you face life without confidence in your own powers, you succumb too easily to setbacks and adversity; you lack the will to persevere.

As you grow in self-esteem, your face, manner, way of talking and moving will tend naturally to project the pleasure you take in being alive.

Integrity is the integration of ideals, convictions, standards, beliefs-and behavior. When our behavior is congruent with our professed values, when ideals and practice match up, we have integrity.

Anyone who really loves you wants you to be authentic. And anyone who doesn't want you to be authentic doesn't really love you.

If you are an adult, you are responsible for your life and well-being. No one owes you the fulfillment of your needs or wants; no one is here on earth to serve you. If you respect the principle of self-ownership, you understand that no one else owns you and that you do not own anyone else. Only on this understanding can there be peace on earth and good will among human beings.

The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.

A commitment to lifelong learning is a natural expression of the practice of living consciously.

It is very difficult to accept in others emotions you cannot accept in yourself.

The stability we cannot find in the world, we must create within our own persons.

Every day, it's important to ask and answer these questions: "What's good in my life?" and "What needs to be done?"

You are not likely to bring out the best in people or nurture their creativity if every time you hear about their problems you instantly offer a solution Encourage people to look for their own solutions-and project the knowledge that they are capable of doing so.

You can be loved by your family, your mate, and your friends yet not love yourself. You can be admired by your associates yet regard yourself as worthless. You can project an image of assurance and poise that fools almost everyone yet secretly tremble with a sense of inadequacy. You can fulfill the expectations of others yet fail your own. You can win every honor yet feel that you have accomplished nothing. What shall it profit a person to gain the esteem of the whole world yet lose his or her own?

The greatest barrier to achievement and success is not lack of talent or ability but rather the feeling that achievement and success, above a certain level, are outside our self-concept-our image of who we are and what is appropriate to us.

It would be hard to name a more certain sign of poor self-esteem than the need to perceive some other group as inferior.

Romantic love is a passionate spiritual-emotional-sexual attachment between a man and a woman that reflects a high regard for the value of each other's person.

It is painful to face the self we know we have never had the integrity to honor and assert.

If my aim is to prove I am 'enough,' the project goes on to infinity-because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable.

Self-respecting men and women think about the consequences of their actions-and are willing to take responsibility for them.

Living consciously is seeking to be aware of everything that bears on our interests, actions, values, purposes, and goals. It is the willingness to confront facts, pleasant or unpleasant. It is the desire to discover our mistakes and correct them . . . it is the quest to keep expanding our awareness and understanding, both of the world external to self and the world within.

Living consciously reflects the conviction that sight is preferable to blindness; that respecting the facts of reality is more satisfying than denying them; that evasion does not make the unreal real or the real unreal; that it is better to correct your mistakes that to pretend they do not exist; and that the more conscious you are of facts bearing on your life and goals, the more wisely and effectively you can act.

It is generally recognized that creativity requires leisure, an absence of rush, time for the mind and imagination to float and wander and roam, time for the individual to descend into the depths of his or her psyche, to be available to barely audible signals rustling for attention. Long periods of time may pass in which nothing seems to be happening. But we know that kind of space must be created if the mind is to leap out of its accustomed ruts, to part from the mechanical, the known, the familiar, the standard, and generate a leap into the new.

Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself.

We must become what we wish to teach.

The ultimate test of our integrity is not how we deal with those whom we agree but how we deal with those who we do not agree.

One of the most significant characteristics of healthy self esteem is that it is the state of one who is not at war either with himself or with others.

Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else.

Out of fear, out of the desire for approval, out of the misguided notions of duty, people surrender themselves-their convictions and their aspirations-every day. There is nothing noble about it. It takes far more courage to fight for your values than to relinquish them.

It is naive to think that self-assertiveness is easy. To live self-assertively--which means to live authentically--is an act of high courage. That is why so many people spend the better part of their lives in hiding--from others and also from themselves.