Jonathan Ames Quotes

By reshaping or decorating our outer selves, we express our inner sense of self: 'I like that' becomes 'I'm like that.'

In a way, you kind of get caught up in whatever image of yourself you think is out there.

I've always tried to figure out what people think of themselves and what they think they're projecting.

When I look in the mirror, I never see a handsome chap or the person people think I am.

I could easily not be the person that people know.

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

I'm actually much more shy and self-conscious than people's perception of me.

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

You see a person when you look in the mirror that no one sees but you. Other people see a person when they look at you, but you're not that person, either.

And the idea of ourselves is our escape from the fact what we really are.

The social self is simply any idea, or system of ideas, drawn from the communicative life, that the mind cherishes as its own.

Your level of performance matches your dominant self image.

Every man is the creation of himself, the image of his own thinking and believing.

What you believe yourself to be, you are.

The ego is just waiting to identify with anything. Whether it's your misery or being a great meditator, it seeks some identification.

Everyone has an identity. One of their own, and one for show.

I was brought up to believe that how I saw myself was more important than how others saw me.

What is the image you have of yourself?

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

Each person tells you who they think they are, and who they think you are.

In my own mind, I am still a fat brunette from Toledo, and I always will be.

Human beings, from their own point of view, are very different than what people see.

I often don't feel like the person I look like.

But people who do not know me are surprised to see me as a real person I guess.

The perception of identity is so intimately bound up with the perception of the human form.