James C. Collins Quotes

It is always the same: once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.

I always want to stay focused on who I am, even as I'm discovering who I am.

If you have a sense of your place in the world, that's the best preparation for anything.

You have to look yourself in the eye and ask, 'Who are you?' It can't be all about work.

When you get your,'Who am I?', question right, all of your,'What should I do?' questions tend to take care of themselves

I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me.

The final mystery is oneself... Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul.

Once you know the world you know how your character fits into it.

Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.

The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself.

I think it is very useful to know ourselves, but when we start naming and labeling, that is dangerous, that gets problematic. It negates that things are always changing. Besides, it's hard to pin a label onto something that's always moving.

First you have to know who you are. That is the most important thing, as if you don't know who you are you will either get swallowed up or you follow some unsuitable trends and just become a nonentity.

I have never seen myself as leading for others. What's important is that I know who I am. Not completely. But I'm coming around third base.

The most wonderful thing in the world is somebody who knows who they are and knows where they're going and knows what they were created to do

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.

I never had time to dream about being anyone else.

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.

I've come to believe that whoever I am didn't start on December 14, 1946, and isn't going to end on whatever that mysterious date is in the future.

I might not agree with myself in a year.

The thing that surprises me most is, you cannot change who you are.

I've always had real trouble knowing what my actual desires and goals are. I've just been dragged along by fate.

I'm on this search trying to figure out exactly who I am and what I have to say to people.

If you asked me for my New Year Resolution, it would be to find out who I am.

The real rub is finding that authentic self and it's not something that's going to come to you overnight.

I don't have dreams. How can I say it? I myself am a dream.