Pema Chodron Quotes

Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.

I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don't think that's only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings. I think it really exists and is part of the human condition. I think in the course of your life you figure out ways to deal with that.

Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience.

I'm interested in characters who should know better, who know they should give up, move on, accept life as it is, with all its constraints - life, death, time - but don't.

I always told, Sandra Bullock was my student when she was younger, I always told her it's important that we hold on to our insecurity, the wisdom of insecurity.

Man is lost and is wandering in a jungle where real values have no meaning. Real values can have meaning to man only when he steps on to the spiritual path, a path where negative emotions have no use.

I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

If I have resistance to something, it means there's something wrong. The resistance to me is a sign of fear.

Life is full of tough decisions, and nothing makes them easy. But the worst ones are really your personal koans, and tormenting ambivalence is just the sense of satori rising. Try, trust, try, and trust again, and eventually you'll feel your mind change its focus to a new level of understanding.

I have the potential to be very strong and powerful, sometimes angry, sometimes passionate. I also can be shy and withhold that because I am afraid. I don't want to freak anybody out with my passion... So I struggle with that all the time.

It's something that I had been pushing down my whole life. The search for meaning, I guess, the whispering of the soul.

I think I have let ego get in the way sometimes - the pendulum swung pretty strongly. I was maybe a little overconfident at one point in my time, and then I went way the other way and thought I wasn't capable of anything.

I'm getting stronger as a person, but sometimes I just need to get over myself!

I get in my own way a lot. I feel a lot more confident than I... am.

The core of who I am and what I'm about, I'm a loyal person, I'm honourable, as I say I'm a softie I'll do anything for anyone. But, there's this other part of me that, I've been exposed to so much at a young age that's now, right, I have to look after myself.

I've always been afraid of who I am and not knowing what I can do.

I think we all go through those moments of self-doubt.

I woke up one day and thought, 'Enough is enough with bullying myself.' The war is within you, and that's also where it's won. You just have to tackle your insecurities and then let them go.

The experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego.

... when one's outward lot is perfect, the sense of inward imperfection is the more pressing.

I probably don't show fear, but I suffer from fear like everyone else.

You will be stupid. You will worry your parents. You will question your own choices, your relationships, your jobs, your friends, where you live, what you studied in college, that you went to college at all... If that happens, you're doing it right.

Being human is difficult. Some people make it more difficult than others. I was one of those people.