Kenneth E. Boulding Quotes

Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.

There seems to be no unexpressed self in animals, as if they are as fully themselves in flesh as possible, with no lag of consciousness to fill up, while we keep trying to grow into something else.

Once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody.

Science has so far been unable to tell us how self-aware dogs are, much less whether they have anything like our conscious thoughts. This is not surprising, since neither scientists nor philosophers can agree about what the consciousness of humans consists of, let alone that of animals.

Self-deprecation is not an answer to keeping one's balance. I think that it's very damaging.

The martial arts are ultimately self-knowledge. A punch or a kick is not to knock the hell out of the guy in front, but to knock the hell out of your ego, your fear, or your hang-ups.

Suppose you stand on a high place to enjoy the beauty of the sparkling sea below. You need do nothing to create that beauty; you need only BE IN THE SAME PLACE WHERE IT IS, and let nature do the rest. So it is with the inner life. There is nothing we can DO to gain psychic beauty. It already exists without our effort. We need only be where we belong, that is, in self-union. Then, beauty IS.

What is needed is the constant unmasking of ego's strategy.

A self - a me - exists in every thought and every emotion. Suffering arises through complete identification with thinking and emotions.

Gaining insight into one's underlying motives, it seems, is more like a belief conversion than a self-discovery process

This god, this one word: I.

When we are aligned with our highest selves, we trust ourselves enough to follow our hearts. Then we are able to be straight and tell the truth about who we are, and what we want, even if it disappoints someone else. Are you being straight about who you are?

Be awake to the details around you, but don't be self-conscious.

It's just something we're talking about and thinking about all the time, reflecting on our privilege - the privilege of what it means even be able to travel.

In 2007, Stanford Business School Advisory committee asserted that self awareness was the most important attribute a leader should develop. The challenge for the modern entrepreneur is to take that path.

Good manners reflect something from inside-an innate sense of consideration for others and respect for self.

...who we are and what we do it is fundamentally a function of what we remember.

Some people spend their whole lives looking for themselves, yet our self is the one thing we surely cannot lose (how like a cheap philosopher I am become, staying in this benighted place). From the moment we are conceived it is the pattern in our blood and our bones are printed through with it like sticks of seaside rock. Nora, on the other hand, says that she’s surprised anyone knows who they are, considering that every cell and molecule in our bodies has been replaced many times over since we were born.

Fundamentally, you can never be someone else. You can only be less of who you are.

Emotions talked to you before you had words, so listen to them ... they are often more honest than the mind's remarkable ability to self deceive.

Self-consciousness, that's what it is. Always my abiding vice. I keep seeing myself. Me watching myself watching others watch me. How do you lose that? What's the trick?

Turning fully toward the glass, I consider what I see. This reflected version of myself, wet, shaking, rumpled, pinched, and slightly stoop, would be alarming were it not for the self-satisfied expression pasted across my face. I would ask the obvious question, 'what are you smiling about?' But I already know the answer: 'It just gets better from here.'

The instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred

We conquer ourselves by learning patience, for she gives to us our longed for victory only in the surrender of self.

So in sum, what are we? We are the creatures that know and know too much. That leaves us with such a burden again we have a choice, to laugh or cry. No other animal does either. We do, depending on the season and the need.