A Quote by Stephen Colbert

There's a degree of narcissism involved in anything in show business. I mean, you can't do it without a healthy ego. Why would you want anybody to listen to you? — © Stephen Colbert
There's a degree of narcissism involved in anything in show business. I mean, you can't do it without a healthy ego. Why would you want anybody to listen to you?
I think I'm great. I mean, I might as well come out and say it. Like most people, I have an ego and I'm in show business, so you have to have kind of a healthy, conflagrated ego to a degree. On the other hand, I'm consumed, like a lot of people, with self-doubt and loathing and guilt.
Show me someone without an ego, and I'll show you a loser - having a healthy ego, or high opinion of yourself, is a real positive in life!
Well-being is possible to the degree to which one has overcome one's narcissism; to the degree to which one is open, responsive, sensitive, awake, empty.... Well-being means, finally, to drop one's Ego, to give up greed, to cease chasing after preservation and the aggrandizement of the Ego, to be and to experience one's self in the act of being, not in having, preserving, coveting, using.
I have no ego. There is no way you can have a big ego and survive in this [show]business. You can't learn if you think no one else has anything to say that's of value.
If you want to provide for your family, maybe show business is not a high degree of success. You will need to keep your day job until you make it, and know it's an odds thing just like the NFL. I personally wouldn't recommend anybody to go into this business.
I don't really marinate in anybody's album because I don't really want to sound like anybody else when I put my album out. So I'd rather not even be tempted to listen to a bunch of other stuff with any degree of emersion in it, cause I just don't want to sound like anything else, so I kinda focus on my own music.
A lot of singers don't really know who they are. They have this massive insecurity and this massive ego and they are sort of pulled between both. I mean, why do you want a lot of people to look at you all the time and listen to you? There is something going on there, there is sort of need to express and attention. It's not just ego, it's some sort of complex thing and sometimes you create characters to say something you want to say and then you just throw yourself into that.
I don't want to say anything negative about anybody or anything or anybody's political beliefs. I've never done that. I've never tried to get involved in those things.
I've done about everything in show business except to play on Broadway. I always hoped that I would one day. It's the World Series of show business. If anybody tells you they're not intimidated, they're lying.
There's a thin line between narcissism, even if it's a healthy narcissism, and entertainment.
I don't think life owes me anything and the business doesn't owe me anything. The only way to approach it is by working hard and loving what you do. If you do that and have faith, maybe you will get lucky. I mean that sincerely and specifically. I truly believe that no professional career in the arts is capable without a healthy dose of luck.
Definitely for me, my personality, having children was a definite sea change. I found it very, very hard to balance show business and being a dad. The narcissism of show business and the complete, total focus of it was very difficult.
Why is balance important? From a life lesson standpoint, it's about learning to enjoy yourself without getting the ego involved.
Narcissism has existed for a long time; social media is just a new outlet to express it. Anybody who is going to record themselves and put that on the Internet, hoping people will watch, there is a degree to which that exists, yeah. I don't know if I would call myself a narcissist. I don't necessarily identify with that label.
Pretty much I want to be Steve Wozniak, who I decided I was at a young age and not change. I want to go back to school and get my college degree like I would have without Apple. I want to teach young kids like I would have without Apple. And part of it is I'm accessible. I'm open. And so many people e-mail me and get me. And as much as I can I try to answer people, listen to them, be polite and say yes.
A Course in Miracles tells us that although 'we think that without the ego, all would be chaos, the opposite is true. Without the ego, all would be love.'
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