Irvin D. Yalom Quotes

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

The examined life is no picnic.

Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you're living?

Everybody knows if you don't have an examined life, you go mad.

Plato did claim that the unexamined life was not worth living. Oedipus Rex was not so sure.

As Socrates I believe said the unexamined life is not worth living. I believe that's true. I do believe that.

I think it's always important to reflect anyway, no matter what age you're approaching or what milestone is in front of you. Reflection should be almost a daily thing if possible.

In a speech, the columnist Charles Krauthammer.... offered a new version of Socrates' famous saying, "The unexamined life is not worth living." In our age of bottomless self-love and obsession with our own feelings, Krauthammer suggested, "The too-examined life is not worth living either.

I have never dissected my personal life. What sense would it make?

I've been living with myself all of my life, so I know all of me. So when I watch me, all I see is me. It's boring.

I spend half my time just living my life, and the other half analyzing it.

Half my life is an act of revision.

The autobiographical doesn't interest me. I could think of few things less interesting than rooting about in my life.

A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth. In a memoir, I look at myself, my life, and the people I love the most in the mirror of the blank screen. In a memoir, feelings are more important than facts, and to write honestly, I have to confront my demons.

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.

The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.

I try to say something about the human condition whenever I can when I'm lucky.

I think I value things more correctly. I hope I look at my life in a way that makes sense.

I study myself more than any other subject; it is my metaphysic, and my physic.

I am a spy in the house of me. I report back from the front lines of the battle that is me. I am somewhat nonplused by the event that is my life.

I have a pretty clear picture of the whole weight of my life, and there are things that I've done that are good, and I'm proud of them. There are things that I'm really not proud of, and that they, you have to look at me with a perspective, and I try really hard to do that, to keep from thinking I'm cool and ever so smart.

I start asking a lot of questions about my own life, and it's not necessarily fun, but it's a good exercise.

It may be true that the unexamined life is not worth living-but neither is the unlived life worth examining.

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.