Sri Aurobindo Quotes

Contemporary thinkers would say that man is continuously transcending himself.

Science, which has transformed the material world, gives man the power of transforming himself.

We will not find the inner strength to evolve to a higher level if we do not inwardly develop this profound feeling that there is something higher than ourselves.

Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees.

She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence.

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

Man is a living duty, a depository of powers that he must not leave in a brute state. Man is a wing.

My daughter's 19. I'm not asking her to develop as an artist. I'm just asking her to develop as a full person, human being.

To become what we are capable of becoming is the only end in life.

I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.

Our own self-realization is the greatest service we can render the world.

I want it to be the greatest thing I ever do: make good humans.

Things do not grow better; they remain as they are. It is we who grow better, by the changes we make in ourselves.

Man is not a being who stands still, he is a being in the process of becoming. The more he enables himself to become, the more he fulfills his true mission.

Like any art, the creation of self is both natural and seemingly impossible. It requires training as well as magic.

A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.

Each new day beckons you to walk on the road of self-transcendence. We transcend ourselves, we do not compete with others. We compete only with our previous achievements, and we get joy. Life is nothing but a perpetual possibility.

It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute.

As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves.

There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished...Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing.

Man can become like God and acquire control over the whole universe if he multiplies infinitely his centre of self-consciousness.

The urge to grow and develop, present in all forms of life, becomes perverted in the Bisy Backson's mind into a constant struggle to change everything (the Bulldozer Backson) and everyone (the Bigoted Backson) else but himself, and interfere with things he has no business interfering with, including practically every form of life on earth.

...if we expended all our energies solely on taking care of our own needs we would stop growing. In that respect what we call "soul" can be viewed as the surplus energy that can be invested into change and transformation. As such, it is the cutting edge of evolution.

We ought, so far as it lies within our power, to aspire to immortality, and do all that we can to live in conformity with the highest that is within us; for even if it is small in quantity, in power and preciousness, it far excels all the rest.