“Genuine self esteem – please understand this – genuine self esteem is not competitive or comparative. Genuine self esteem isn’t expressed by self-glorification at the expense of others, or by trying to make yourself superior to everyone else, or diminishing others in order to elevate yourself. Arrogance, boastfulness, the overestimation of your abilities, reflect low self esteem, even though we’re often encouraged to believe the opposite. In human beings, joy in the simple fact of existence is a core meaning of healthy self esteem. Thus understood, how can you possibly have too much of it?”

“Genuine self esteem – please understand this – genuine self esteem is not competitive or comparative. Genuine self esteem isn’t expressed by self-glorification at the expense of others, or by trying to make yourself superior to everyone else, or diminishing others in order to elevate yourself. Arrogance, boastfulness, the overestimation of your abilities, reflect low self esteem, even though we’re often encouraged to believe the opposite. In human beings, joy in the simple fact of existence is a core meaning of healthy self esteem. Thus understood, how can you possibly have too much of it?”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem the more likely one will treat others with respect kindness and generosity. People who do not experience self-love have little or no capacity to love others.”

“There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem the more likely one will treat others with respect kindness and generosity. People who do not experience self-love have little or no capacity to love others.”

“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.”

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

“It sounded, I told him, as if he had never learned to balance projecting goals into the future with appreciating and living in the present....To the extent that our goal is to "prove" ourselves or ward off the fear of failure, this balance is difficult to achieve. We are too driven. Not joy but anxiety is our motor.But if our aim is self-expression rather than self-justification, the balance tends to come more naturally. We will still need to think about its daily implementation, but the anxiety of wounded self-esteem will not make the task nearly impossible.”