“The first act of honoring the self is the assertion of consciousness: the choice to think, to be aware, to send the searchlight of consciousness outward toward the world and inward toward our own being. To default on this effort is to default on the self at the most basic level.”

“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.”