Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

To me the ego is the habitual and compulsive thought processes that go through everybody's mind continuously. External things like possessions or memories or failures or successes or achievements. Your personal history.

Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.

Who you are and what you think of yourself is constantly changing.

You must learn to perceive as your self that which lies outside you. Looking only within oneself leads to a hardening in oneself, to a higher egotism.

If I were a chocolate I'd eat myself. Seriously, we're all interested in ourselves and what other people are saying about us to some extent.

There isn't any me. I'm you. Don't make up a separate me.

Actors and actresses who say they never go to see their own pictures are talking through their hats. You don't have to be a Freud to know that the most fascinating person in the world - actors or anybody - is yourself.

Ego is simply an idea of who you are that you carry around with you.

I don't dream about anyone - except myself

I guess there are a lot of people out there that think they're supposed to define themselves in isolation, but that's not necessarily the case.

After all, everyone's favorite subject is themselves.

In my younger years my dedication may have expressed itself egotistically.

My family, in a way, gives me a reference as to who I am as an individual, and my work gives me a reference as to who I am as a Homo sapiens. I think that's a very perfect match, in my view.

Everything you think about yourself, everything you believe about yourself, is because you learned it.

When I was younger, my father told me not to pigeonhole the way that I perceive myself.

You think you know who you are, and then other people have these other ideas.

We reproach people for talking about themselves; but it is the subject they treat best.

Ego is the immediate dictate of human consciousness.

The development of the meaning attaching to the personal self, the conscious being, is the subject matter of the history of psychology.

The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.

Egoic consciousness is the one we all normally operate with, until we are told there is something else! Every culture teaches egoic consciousness in different ways. At that level it is all about me, my preferences, my choices, my needs, my desires and me and my group as the central reference point.

You don't realize how much a part of your character is part of yourself until you are no longer playing that character.

There is no self-portrait of me.

Of course, we are all egoists. Egoism is so much a part of our humanity.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.