Irvin D. Yalom Quotes

The fighter (like the writer) must stand alone. If he loses he cannot call an executive conference and throw off on a vice president or the assistant sales manager. He is consequently resented by fractional characters who cannot live outside an organization.

All problems have to be solved eventually by ONESELF, and that's where all your lovely John Donne stuff turns out to be a load of crap because, in the last analysis, A MAN IS AN ISLAND.

I don't collaborate. You're born alone, you die alone, you get on stage alone.

I think I learned pretty early that in the end, it's only you. To an extent, you're all alone.

I do all this alone, everything I achieve, I achieve alone, because it's my head I'm locked into, and I share this space with nobody but myself.

At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world.

In the end you have only you.

He travels the fastest who travels alone.

Solitude is independence.

We are ultimately alone in that we are ultimately responsible for ourselves.

You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence.

Foundational autonomy asserts instead that in the most fundamental practical sense, I am my own creator, which means that at the core, I am alone.

Living by myself out in Malibu has been really good. I kind of have my freedom; I've got a whole house to myself. The tough part comes when sometimes, you know, you get pretty lonely.

The liberty to live for self alone becomes in time a weary bondage.

I always thought, 'I'm on my own, and that's the way it should be.'

Being on your own sometimes is appealing.

Isolation is the one sure way to human happiness.

I think I'm still a lone wolf, internally. And I always will be.

I was the youngest and on my own a lot. I think this probably taught me independence and how to be okay with my own company. Also, it meant I read a lot.

My inventory of people who can save me is down to just me.

If you cannot live alone, you were born a slave.

You can't rely on anything. At the end of the day, all you have is yourself.

He who is alone is happy. Do good to all, like everyone, but do not love anyone. It is a bondage, and bondage brings only misery. Live alone in your mind - that is happiness. To have nobody to care for and never minding who cares for one is the way to be free.

Blessed are those who entrust their lives to no one.

When it comes to the important things one is always alone.