BY Table of Contents
To be yourself is no small task. It takes clarity, courage, and the willingness to face who you really are, not just who you wish to be.
These quotes are for anyone choosing to show up fully: flaws, fears, fire, and all. Use them as fuel for your own evolution.
Know and Accept Yourself
“To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.” – Bruce Lee
“Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Never apologize for being yourself.” – Paulo Coelho
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung
“The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be.” – Leo Buscaglia
“How can man know himself? It is a dark, mysterious business: if a hare has seven skins, a man may skin himself seventy times seven times without being able to say, ‘Now that is truly you; that is no longer your outside.’
It is also an agonizing, hazardous undertaking thus to dig into oneself, to climb down toughly and directly into the tunnels of one’s being.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.” – Carl Jung
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” – Carl Jung
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.
They will practice yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the literature of the whole world – all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls.” – Carl Jung
“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” – Carl Jung
“You’re always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company.” – Diane von Furstenberg
“At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures—be what he is.
And, above all, accept these things.” – Albert Camus
“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” – Howard Thurman
“We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate – it oppresses.
And I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend and fellow sufferer. I do not in the least mean to say that we must never pass judgement when we desire to help and improve.
But if the doctor wishes to help a human being, he must be able to accept him as he is. And he can do this in reality only when he has already seen and accepted himself as he is.” – Carl Jung
Defy Conformity and Live on Your Own Terms
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” – John F. Kennedy
“I don’t give a damn what others say. It’s okay to color outside the lines.” – Jimi Hendrix
“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Follow your honest convictions, and stay strong.” – William Thackeray
“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.” – Colette
“Why are you trying so hard to fit in when you were born to stand out?” – Ian Wallace
Let Go of Others’ Opinions
“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” – Steve Jobs
“You can’t base your life on other people’s expectations.” – Stevie Wonder
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” – Bernard M. Baruch
“When you’re 20 you care what everyone thinks, when you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks, when you’re 60 you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchill
Embrace Who You Truly Are
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Unknown (often misattributed to Oscar Wilde)
“Always be a first-rate version of yourself and not a second-rate version of someone else.” – Judy Garland
“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.” – Bruce Lee
“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” – E. E. Cummings
“Being the best is great, you’re the number one. Being unique is greater, you’re the only one.” – Anonymous
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” – Franz Kafka
“To say ‘I love you’ one must know first how to say the ‘I.’” – Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
“I would always rather be happy than dignified.” – Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Believe in Your Power
“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” – Louisa May Alcott
“Believe you can, and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“Confidence comes not from always being right, but from not fearing to be wrong.” – Peter T. Mcintyre
“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.” – Lucille Ball
“Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel, Believing in Ourselves: The Wisdom of Women
“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.” – J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Growth and Transformation
“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” – Gautam Buddha
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit alone in his room.” – Blaise Pascal
“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way.
I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone.
This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.” – Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others.
Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval.
Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.” – Lao Tzu
“It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.” – Henry David Thoreau
“The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.” – Mark Twain
“If my aim is to prove that I’m ‘enough,’ the project goes on to infinity—because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable.” – Nathaniel Branden, The Six Pillars of Self-esteem