Pankaj Mishra Quotes

I see what you mean. It must be a huge relief, and an easy way out, to think the devil is always outside of us. (…) we would stop looking for Sheitan outside and instead focus on ourselves. What we need is sincere self-examination. Not being on the watch for the faults of others.” (p. 257).

Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.

So long as we are full of self we are shocked at the faults of others. Let us think often of our own sin, and we shall be lenient to the sins of others.

Self-awareness is our capacity to stand apart from ourselves and examine our thinking, our motives, our history, our scripts, our actions, and our habits and tendencies.

It's funny because sometimes one doesn't actually consider these things for one's self until one's in a situation like this press conferece where one has to kind of think about it.

Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions. Notice what you notice. Observe what's vivid. Catch yourself thinking. Vividness is self-selecting. And remember the future.

A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside of himself or herself ... lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.

We should live as if we were in public view, and think, too, as if someone could peer into the inmost recesses of our hearts-which someone can!

We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we decided to go through a process of self-purification.

We have so committed ourselves in different ways that we have hardly any time for self-reflection, to observe, to study.

Once the current of awareness of the self is set afoot, it becomes everlasting and continuous by intensification.

...Stop blaming me, thinking I'm the problem. If you think I'm the problem, then you have to change me. If you realize that you're the problem, then you can change yourself, learn something and grow wiser. Most people want everyone else in the world to change themselves. Let me tell you, it's easier to change yourself than everyone else.

I think this is what college is all about: self-examination and dealing with those questions of "Who am I?"

Hush, self, let me think.

At every moment, step by step, one must confront what one is thinking and saying with what one is doing, what one is.

I think the call of the inward life starts here. Solitude helps you differentiate, define the borders of the self. Solitude helps you figure our where everybody else stops and you begins.

I'm trying to educate people about things that I believe are right, and some of the things that I believe are right might not be right, so I live in constant self-doubt. I think that creates a kind of search that you have to have, and it prevents you from doing a lot of stuff that you would normally do.

To read your own mind is to look at your self and read your soul. Hatred becomes love and that is the path I am working on

We imagine that if we had time we would quiet our more shallow selves and listen to a deeper flow of inspiration. Again, this is a myth that lets us off the hook - if I wait for enough time to listen, I don't have to listen now, I don't have to take responsibility for being available to what is trying to bubble up today.

Self-inquiry is the process and the goal also. 'I am' is the goal and the final reality. To hold to it with effort is self-inquiry. When spontaneous and natural it is realization.

If someone is self-aware, then they can always continue to grow. If they're not self-aware, I think it's harder for them to evolve or adapt beyond who they already are.

Self-awareness is a key to self-mastery

We are all the time, from our childhood, trying to lay the blame upon something outside ourselves. We are always standing up to set right other people, and not ourselves. If we are miserable, we say, "Oh, the world is a devil's world." We curse others and say, "What infatuated fools!" But why should we be in such a world, if we really are so good? If this is a devil's world, we must be devils also; why else should we be here? "Oh, the people of the world are so selfish!" True enough; but why should we be found in that company, if we be better? Just think of that.

I'm starting with the man in the mirror

Think... of the world you carry within you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning toward a future of your own - only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it.