Karl Shapiro Quotes

Self knowledge is always bad news.

The knowledge of self is the most important thing, because how are you going to know God if you don't know yourself? How are you going to know anything if you don't know yourself?

It is curious how an age of public self-revelation, and of the use of psychological jargon, should also be an age when self-examination is rarely practised.

We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world - introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably - that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.

He knows the universe and does not know himself.

Know thyself, for through thyself only thou canst know God.

This precept descended from Heaven: know thyself.

When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything.

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

Self-knowledge is better than self-control any day," Raquel said firmly. "And I know myself well enough to know how I act around cookies.

Self knowledge is the beginning of self improvement.

If a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he had such matchless opportunities for observation.

All ages have said and repeated that one should strive to know one's self. This is a strange demand which no one up to now has measured up to and, strictly considered, no one should. With all their study and effort, people are directed to what is outside, to the world about them, and they are kept busy coming to know this and to master it to the extent that their purposes require. . . . How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.

The news that reaches your consciousness is incomplete and often not to be relied on.... Turn your eyes inward, look into your own depths, learn first to know yourself!

After all, without understanding yourself, what basis have you for right thinking?

Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.

Self examination is the key to insight, which is the key to wisdom

How can one learn to know oneself? Never by introspection, rather by action.

Self-contemplation is infallibly the symptom of disease.

You know more about me than I do about myself, that's probably true.

When people don't have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.

You have to know who you are, if you don't you have nightmares.

I am really puzzled to understand myself.

When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'