Here’s the best collection f 356 ego quotes that’ll help you understand the negative impact it creates in our life. These quotes will help you become more positive in life by dropping the ego.
Ego Quotes
1. Ego is the enemy. – Ryan Holiday
2. Outcomes over ego. – Shane Parrish
3. Bragging dims the soul. – Unknown
4. Truth above everything. – Naval Ravikant
5. Men learn while they teach. – Seneca
6. Pride goes before destruction. – Aesop
7. Slow but steady wins the race. – Aesop
8. If you wish to be loved, love. – Seneca
9. After success, keep on working. – Maxime Lagacé
10. Drop ego and listen. Empathize. – Naval Ravikant
11. Ego trip: a journey to nowhere. – Robert Half
12. Ego takes everything personally. – Eckhart Tolle
13. Starve your ego. Feed your soul. – Unknown
14. Be capable of negating your ego. – Robert Greene
15. Where id was, there ego shall be. – Sigmund Freud
16. A boaster and a liar are cousins. – German proverb
17. Above all, don’t lie to yourself. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
18. When the ego dies, the soul awakes. – Mahatma Gandhi
19. Rule your mind or it will rule you. – Buddha
20. Work for a cause, not for applause. – Unknown
21. Do not seek praise. Seek criticism. – Paul Arden
22. Let us be more simple and less vain. – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
23. Gratitude is the sign of noble souls. – Aesop
24. Live life to express, not to impress. – Unknown
25. Love without sacrifice is like theft. – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
26. It’s better to be ignorant than wrong. – Shane Parrish
27. We are rarely proud when we are alone. – Voltaire
28. The ego is not master in its own house. – Sigmund Freud
29. I have an ego the size of a small planet. – Linus Torvalds
30. Fragile egos make for fragile friendships. – @TheStoicEmperor
31. Train yourself to take nothing personally. – Robert Greene
32. I like the moment when I break a man’s ego. – Bobby Fischer
33. There’s no ego when you’re a ukulele player. – Jake Shimabukuro
34. In the battle of egos, both competitors lose. – Robin Sharma
35. Respect yourself and others will respect you. – Confucius
36. Ego is negative but self-respect is positive. – Younus AlGohar
37. When something dies is the greatest teaching. – Shunryu Suzuki
38. My opponent is my teacher, my ego is my enemy. – Renzo Gracie
39. Egotism sucks us down like the law of gravity. – Cyril Connolly
40. Nations have their ego, just like individuals. – James Joyce
41. Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves. – Emily Brontë
42. Fools try to impress. The wise simply express. – Maxime Lagacé
43. The Ego’s job is to kill everything but itself. – Byron Katie
44. Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting. – Emmet Fox
45. Spoil not an act of kindness by speaking of it. – Unknown
46. Enlightenment is ego’s ultimate disappointment. – Chögyam Trungpa
47. Leave the ego otherwise everyone will leave you. – Unknown
48. Receive without pride, let go without attachment. – Marcus Aurelius
49. Big egos are big shields for lots of empty space. – Diane Black
50. Be faithful to that which exists within yourself. – Andre Gide
51. When there is no desire, all things are at peace. – Lao Tzu
52. Flattery is all right so long as you don’t inhale. – Adlai Stevenson
53. I don’t care what you think unless it is about me. – Kurt Cobain
54. A man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress. – Ayn Rand
55. Avoid making yourself the subject of conversation. – Jean de la Bruyere
56. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold. – Thomas Jefferson
57. Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world. – Miyamoto Musashi
58. Silence is the respite of the confident and strong. – Ryan Holiday
59. We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm. – Winston Churchill
60. It is hard to resist a flatterer who gets it right. – Robert Brault
61. If every fool wore a crown, we should all be kings. – Welsh proverb
62. Jealousy is the suspicion of one’s own inferiority. – Emily Post
63. Perfect humility tends to the annihilation of self. – Meister Eckhart
64. The more awake we become, the less we need the ego. – Steven Pressfield
65. A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul. – Jillian Michaels
66. If I only had a little humility, I would be perfect. – Ted Turner
67. People confuse ego, lust, insecurity with true love. – Simon Cowell
68. Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ‘Ego’. – Friedrich Nietzsche
69. It’s hard to be humble when you are as great as I am. – Muhammad Ali
70. None are so empty as those who are full of themselves. – Benjamin Whichcote
71. A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle. – Benjamin Franklin
72. Soar with wit. Conquer with dignity. Handle with care. – Criss Jami
73. Ego is about who’s right. Truth is about what’s right. – Mike Maples Jr
74. An outside enemy exists only if there is anger inside. – Thubten Zopa Rinpoche
75. Humility is born of the spirit, humiliation of the ego. – Alan Cohen
76. The loudest in the room is the weakest one in the room. – Frank Lucas
77. Pride is ugly. It says ‘If you succeed I am a failure’. – Ezra Taft Benson
78. You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak. – George Clooney
79. Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it is dark. – Zen proverb
80. Ego is false confidence, self-respect is true confidence. – Naval Ravikant
81. The greatest prison of all is the one our ego puts us in. – Shane Parrish
82. The ego isn’t a real thing, it’s just the unexamined mind. – Thibaut
83. Show me someone without an ego, and I’ll show you a loser. – Donald Trump
84. For me humility was a relief, the opposite of humiliation. – Dan Harris
85. We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility. – Rabindranath Tagore
86. I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself. – Michel de Montaigne
87. Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity. – Frank Leahy
88. It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles. – Niccolò Machiavelli
89. Practice pure generosity to continuously dissipate the ego. – Tony Choi
90. Humility is, in a sense, admitting how egotistical you are. – Criss Jami
91. The biggest challenge after success is shutting up about it. – Criss Jami
92. Pride must die in you, or nothing of heaven can live in you. – Andrew Murray
93. Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius. Fulton J. – Sheen
94. Forget about winning and losing, forget about pride and pain. – Bruce Lee
95. Fixed mindset is about ego, growth mindset is about presence. – Unknown
96. Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know. – Robert Fulghum
97. I long to escape the prison of my ego and lose myself in you. – Rumi
98. No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves. – Hugh Prather
99. Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries. – Thomas Carlyle
100. Picking the glamorous choice is almost always a bad decision. – Life Math Money
101. When your ego is no more, only then will you know who you are. – Rajneesh
102. Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power. – Lao Tzu
103. Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults. – Lord Chesterfield
104. Self-worth comes from one thing – thinking that you are worthy. – Wayne Dyer
105. Don’t worry about looking good; worry about achieving your goal. – Ray Dalio
106. If you learn how to make fun of yourself, your ego will go down. – Nirmala Srivastava
107. There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. – Eckhart Tolle
108. Because they consistently observe and listen, the humble improve. – Ryan Holiday
109. Humility is nothing but truth, and pride is nothing but lying. St. – Vincent de Paul
110. Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself. – Friedrich Nietzsche
111. The ego is a veil between humans and God. In prayer all are equal. – Rumi
112. Egoist: a person of low taste, more interested in himself than me. – Ambrose Bierce
113. Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive. – John Boyd
114. The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule. – Albert Einstein
115. We optimize for short-term ego protection over long-term happiness. – Shane Parrish
116. If we can develop a truly humble attitude, we can change the world. – Pope Francis
117. Man is not a rational animal he is a rationalizing animal. Robert A. – Heinlein
118. One learns to ignore criticism by first learning to ignore applause. – Robert Brault
119. People that put themselves above others will fall longer and harder. – Gina Lindley
120. The ego is antifragile. When attacked it inflates to protect itself. – Michael
121. The ego seeks to divide and separate. Spirit seeks to unify and heal. – Pema Chödrön
122. The gulf left by the absence of ego is quickly filled with knowledge. – Shane Parrish
123. When ego is lost, limit is lost. You become infinite, kind, beautiful. – Harbhajan Singh Yogi
124. Our ego is our silent partner – too often with a controlling interest. – Cullen Hightower
125. There is no one who would not rather appear to know than to be taught. – Marcus Fabius Quintilianus
126. The walls of pride are high and wide, can’t see over to the other side. – Bob Dylan
127. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. – Mahatma Gandhi
128. The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated. – William James
129. Judgments prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances. – Wayne Dyer
130. On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom. – Michel de Montaigne
131. The offspring of riches: Pride, vanity, ostentation, arrogance, tyranny. – Mark Twain
132. Pride was the belt you used to hold your pants up when you had no pants. – Stephen King
133. The fools in life want things fast and easy — money, success, attention. – Robert Greene
134. On the sentence “I’ve changed my mind”: Four simple and underused words. – Naval Ravikant
135. One of the ego’s favorite paths of resistance is to fill you with doubt. – Ram Dass
136. You have to try to reply to criticism with your intellect, not your ego. – Mike Brearley
137. The ultimate aim of the ego is not to see something, but to be something. – Muhammad Iqbal
138. Great tranquility of heart is his who cares for neither praise nor blame. – Thomas a Kempis
139. Confidence turns into pride only when you are in denial of your mistakes. – Criss Jami
140. Understand: You should be radiating confidence, not arrogance or disdain. – Robert Greene
141. Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be ready to let it go. – Marcus Aurelius
142. I’m willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong. – Samuel Goldwyn
143. To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self. – Joan Didion
144. The more you dis-identify with your ego, the more complete is your freedom. – @TheAncientSage
145. When ego is in control it judges and punishes. But love forgives and heals. – Angie Karan
146. It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows. – Epictetus
147. The only way to escape the corruptible effect of praise is to go on working. – Albert Einstein
148. The great corrupter of public men is the ego — corrupter because distracter. – Dean Acheson
149. If you want to improve, you must be content to be thought foolish and stupid. – Epictetus
150. When someone sings his own praises, he always gets the tune too high. Mary H. – Waldrip
151. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity. – Marina Abramovic
152. Complaining is one of the ego’s favorite strategies for strengthening itself. – Eckhart Tolle
153. Fools try to make themselves bigger. The wise try to make themselves smaller. – Maxime Lagacé
154. If someone corrects you, and you feel offended, then you have an ego problem. – Nouman Ali Khan
155. The last time I saw him he was walking down lover’s lane holding his own hand. – Fred Allen
156. Humility and pride will forever battle whenever or wherever love is concerned. – Jeremy Aldana
157. We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause. – Steven Pressfield
158. We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak. – Epictetus
159. Success is seen as proof of guilt by those with jealous minds and fragile egos. – @TheStoicEmperor
160. The decision to make the present moment into your friend is the end of the ego. – Eckhart Tolle
161. There’s just work to be done and lessons to be learnt. In all that is around us. – Ryan Holiday
162. Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful. – Ann Landers
163. Some people’s insecurity and ego fragility cannot tolerate the slightest offense. – Robert Greene
164. In all that surrounds him the egotist sees only the frame of his own portrait. J. – Petit-Senn
165. The ego is an exquisite instrument. Enjoy it, use it – just don’t get lost in it. – Ram Dass
166. Goals must never be from your ego, but problems that cry for a solution. Robert H. – Schuller
167. Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple. – Barry Switzer
168. You have no choice. You must leave your ego on the doorstep before you enter love. – Kamand Kojouri
169. The way to do really big things seems to be to start with deceptively small things. – Paul Graham
170. Once the ego inflates it will only come back to earth through some jarring failure. – Robert Greene
171. Speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy. – Marcus Aurelius
172. There are two kinds of egotists: Those who admit it, and the rest of us. Laurence J. – Peter
173. Letting go of your ego opens the door to taking a new and creative course of action. – Suzanne Mayo Frindt
174. The hated man is the result of his hater’s pride rather than his hater’s conscience. – Criss Jami
175. Transform jealousy to admiration, and what you admire will become part of your life. – Yoko Ono
176. If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now. – Douglas Adams
177. I can’t tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring. – James McNeill Whistler
178. The ego is always looking to find something. The Spirit can see what’s already there. – Marianne Williamson
179. It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help. – Unknown
180. Your worst enemy is hiding within yourself, and that enemy is your nafs or false ego. – Rumi
181. It is easy to thank after obtaining what you want, thank before having what you want. – Rumi
182. A man may do an immense deal of good, if he does not care who gets the credit for it. – Father Strickland
183. Our ego and emotions get in the way of seeing the problem clearly. Detachment is key. – George Mack
184. Pride makes us do things well. But it is love that makes us do them to perfection. H. – Jackson Brown Jr
185. It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. Harry S. – Truman
186. It is a narrow passageway that leads to the garden of contentment. Big egos don’t fit. – @TheStoicEmperor
187. Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty. – John Lennon
188. The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment. – Elbert Hubbard
189. Celebrate, but not for too loudly. Be proud, but not for too long. Keep working, always. – Maxime Lagacé
190. Fear of fear is the birth place of the ego, its resting place and its final destination. – Mircea Macave
191. Always keep your ego in check and not be afraid to listen. Listening is a great art form. – Clint Eastwood
192. If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. – Deepak Chopra
193. First man wants money. Then money man wants power. Then powerful man wants peace of mind. – Thibaut
194. Fools, because of fear, accumulate and consume. The wise, because of love, give and create. – Maxime Lagacé
195. Amateurs focus on tearing other people down. Professionals focus on making everyone better. – Shane Parrish
196. You’re not as good as you think. You don’t have it all figured out. Stay focused. Do better. – Ryan Holiday
197. Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego. – Eckhart Tolle
198. The trouble with most of us is that we’d rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. – Norman Vincent Peale
199. Amateurs think disagreements are threats. Professionals see them as an opportunity to learn. – Shane Parrish
200. It’s the sense of superiority and certainty that exceeds the bounds of confidence and talent. – Ryan Holiday
201. He that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle. – William Shakespeare
202. The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. – Eric Hoffer
203. We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free. – Jiddu Krishnamurti
204. If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame. – Jocko Willink
205. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. – Richard Feynman
206. A relationship never dies a natural death. It is always murdered by ego, attitude and ignorance. – Srinivas Shenoy
207. Withhold admiration from a narcissist and be disliked. Give it and be treated with indifference. – Mason Cooley
208. The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect. – Thomas Huxley
209. I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own. – Margaret Fuller
210. The narcissist devours people, consumes their output, and casts the empty, writhing shells aside. – Sam Vaknin
211. Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism. – Sigmund Freud
212. Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be. – Carlos Castaneda
213. The pride that keeps us from forgiving is the same pride which keeps us from accepting forgiveness. – Frederick Buechner
214. When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everyone will respect you. – Lao Tzu
215. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Gilbert K. – Chesterton
216. Love is happy when it is able to give something. The ego is happy when it is able to take something. – Osho
217. The key is to ego is distinguishing between when it’s serving you and when it’s getting in your way. – Shane Parrish
218. Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit. – Chögyam Trungpa
219. Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it. – Colin Powell
220. For the ego to survive, it must make time – past and future – more important than the present moment. – Eckhart Tolle
221. Pride is an admission of weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads all rivals. Fulton J. – Sheen
222. What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness. – Ryan Holiday
223. It doesn’t matter how well you’re doing, your ego and their accomplishments make you feel like nothing. – Ryan Holiday
224. Cast out pride and vanity; have no thought of trying to rule over others or of outdoing them. Wallace D. – Wattles
225. You shouldn’t gloat about anything you’ve done; you ought to keep going and find something better to do. – David Packard
226. Meditation is a state of mind in which the ‘me’ is absent. And therefore that very absence brings order. – Jiddu Krishnamurti
227. To obtain satori, one must let go of the ego. To receive everything, one must open one’s hands and give. – Taisen Deshimaru
228. When you bow, you should just bow; when you sit, you should just sit; when you eat, you should just eat. – Shunryu Suzuki
229. An egotist is not a man who thinks too much of himself; he is a man who thinks too little of other people. – Joseph Fort Newton
230. Fight your own pride and ego and be open-minded and always learning new techniques, new things from anyone. – Sam Sheridan
231. Body is purified by water. Ego by tears. Intellect is purified by knowledge. And soul is purified with love. – Ali ibn Abi Talib
232. To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength. – Criss Jami
233. The spirit of arrogance most definitely makes you shine. It paints a bright red target on your own forehead. – Criss Jami
234. Learn to fail with pride – and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error – by mastering the error part. – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
235. We cannot bear very much reality, we are biased to protect our egos against the onslaught of unwelcome truths. – Garrett Hardin
236. Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. – Ryan Holiday
237. Let your action be free of all traces of ego. When an action is free of ego it leaves no problems in its wake. – @TheAncientSage
238. The ego relies on the familiar. It is reluctant to experience the unknown, which is they very essence of life. – Deepak Chopra
239. What I’ve found in my research is that realism and self-honesty are the antidote to ego, hubris, and delusion. – Ryan Holiday
240. Charisma is a combination of two attributes. It’s the ability to project confidence and love at the same time. – Naval Ravikant
241. As soon as you refrain yourself you don’t really love. The weak protect themselves. The strong give everything. – Maxime Lagacé
242. Once you stop clinging and let things be, you’ll be free, even of birth and death. You’ll transform everything. – Bodhidharma
243. All ego really is, is our opinions, which we take to be solid, real, and the absolute truth about how things are. – Pema Chödrön
244. Apologizing does not always mean you are wrong, it just means that you value your relationship more than your ego. – Unknown
245. The ordinary focus on looking confident and looking good. The superior focus on creating value and helping others. – Maxime Lagacé
246. Do not hold on to your original idea out of sheer stubbornness, or because your ego is tied up with its rightness. – Robert Greene
247. Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence. – Carl Gustav Jung
248. When we constantly judge every tiny event, we lose complete perspective over the nuances and spontaneities of life. – Naval Ravikant
249. Attempting to destroy something out of hate or ego often ensures that it will be preserved and disseminated forever. – Ryan Holiday
250. If you never smile, you’re too serious. If you never help, you’re too narcissist. If you never give, you never love. – Maxime Lagacé
251. The test we must set for ourselves is not to march alone but to march in such a way that others will wish to join us. – Hubert Humphrey
252. Kill the cow of your ego as quickly as you can, so that your inner spirit can come to life and attain true awareness. – Rumi
253. I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. – Charlotte Brontë
254. We overestimate the importance of what we focus on because we think we are special people in a special time and place. – Naval Ravikant
255. It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride. – John Ruskin
256. Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings. – Stephen King
257. You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you. Things can’t shape our decisions by themselves. – Marcus Aurelius
258. People will come up with extraordinarily convoluted theories to avoid admitting that they have been wrong about something. – @TheStoicEmperor
259. Self-awareness is not self-centeredness, and spirituality is not narcissism. ‘Know thyself’ is not a narcissistic pursuit. – Marianne Williamson
260. Identity invites confirmation bias, which neutralizes your ability to learn. Shedding identity is a prerequisite to wisdom. – Michael
261. Those who are arrogant are insecure. Those who are humble are courageous. Those who don’t care about their status are wise. – Maxime Lagacé
262. The voice inside your head shapes what you see, think, and feel. It protects your ego, even if that means distorting reality. – Shane Parrish
263. All you need to know and observe in yourself is this: Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that’s the ego in you. – Eckhart Tolle
264. Destroy your illusions so you can see reality. Destroy your fears so you can take risks. Destroy your ego so you can see life. – Maxime Lagacé
265. All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride. – Sophocles
266. No time for reading. For controlling your arrogance, yes. For overcoming pain and pleasure, yes. For outgrowing ambition, yes. – Marcus Aurelius
267. Listening is difficult because it involves suppressing your ego long enough to consider what is being said before you respond. – Shane Parrish
268. Consciousness is the bridge, the golden bridge, from this world to the other, from hell to heaven, from the ego to the divine. – Osho
269. Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out, and strike it, merely to show that you have one. – Lord Chesterfield
270. The man who thinks he can live without others is mistaken; the one who thinks others can’t live without him is even more deluded. – Hasidic saying
271. The desire for self-development stems from “narcissistic” desires, a tendency to self-aggrandizement and superiority over others. – Sigmund Freud
272. When you’re upset because someone doesn’t like you, it’s your ego operating: you validate your existence based on their approval. – Thibaut
273. You’re subject to sorrow, fear, jealousy, anger and inconsistency. That’s the real reason you should admit that you are not wise. – Marcus Aurelius
274. Never be distracted by people’s glamorous portraits of themselves and their lives; search and dig for what really imprisons them. – Robert Greene
275. Most successful people are people you’ve never heard of. They want it that way. It keeps them sober. It helps them do their jobs. – Ryan Holiday
276. Never be angry at someone for telling you the truth, no matter how unpleasant. If you don’t, you’ll eventually stop hearing truth. – Life Math Money
277. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. – Shunryu Suzuki
278. That’s how it seems to go: We’re never happy with what we have, we want what others have too. We want to have more than everyone else. – Ryan Holiday
279. Something good should be a source of pride, correct? ‘Yes’. And can one really take pride in a momentary pleasure? Please don’t say yes. – Marcus Aurelius
280. Never let pride or concern for your reputation pull you farther into the morass; both will suffer far greater blows by your persistence. – Robert Greene
281. Instead of treating events as wins or losses, ask “Did I learn something I can apply in the future?” If not, you must treat it as a loss. – Naval Ravikant
282. Every ego wants to be special. If it can’t be special by being superior to others, it’s also quite happy with being especially miserable. – Eckhart Tolle
283. One big mistake I see people make over and over is focusing on proving themselves right, instead of focusing on achieving the best outcome. – Shane Parrish
284. We’re all the stars of our own movies, but cutting back on the number of “Do you know who I am?” thoughts made my life infinitely smoother. – Dan Harris
285. Your ego is an avid interpreter. It is so quick to interpret events as ‘bad’ or ‘good’ or ‘right’. It never fails to see the little picture. – Robert Holden
286. It’s not the great stars that win; it’s the great teams that win. It’s the teams that subjugate their ego to the team and put the team first. – Robert Kraft
287. Ego says ‘I can do no wrong’, whereas confidence says ‘I can get this right’. Confidence says ‘I’m valuable’ while ego says ‘I’m invaluable’. – Todd Henry
288. Leave your ego at the door every morning, and just do some truly great work. Few things will make you feel better than a job brilliantly done. – Robin Sharma
289. We must go beyond the constant clamor of ego, beyond the tools of logic and reason, to the still, calm place within us: the realm of the soul. – Deepak Chopra
290. Good provocation is virtuous truth seeking that shatters delusion. Bad provocation is the fragile ego that deals with insecurity by lashing out. – @TheStoicEmperor
291. A willingness to be wrong in conversation can help you avoid being wrong in a costlier arena. Better to lose an argument than a fortune, or a war. – @TheStoicEmperor
292. With self-awareness, you can calm your mind. With a calm mind, you can understand things better. When you understand things better, you love more. – Maxime Lagacé
293. The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. – Wayne Dyer
294. Ego and learning are incompatible. If you want to learn you must put your ego aside and adopt a beginner’s mindset, assuming that you know nothing. – @TheAncientSage
295. Your ego is your self-image created by thought. It’s your social mask requiring validation because it lives in fear of losing its sense of identity. – Thibaut
296. Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything. – Rainer Maria Rilke
297. Amateurs see feedback and coaching as someone criticizing them as a person. Professionals know they have weak spots and seek out thoughtful criticism. – Shane Parrish
298. The bigger your heart, the more you love, the more you control your life. The bigger your ego, the more you’re scared, the more others control your life. – Maxime Lagacé
299. I think the hard thing here is seeing the truth. To see the truth, you have to get your ego out of the way because your ego doesn’t want to face the truth. – Naval Ravikant
300. Ego needs honors in order to be validated. Confidence, on the other hand, is able to wait and focus on the task at hand regardless of external recognition. – Ryan Holiday
301. Your ego screams for people to acknowledge you. But you must do nothing. Take it. Eat it until you’re sick. Endure it. Quietly brush it off and work harder. – Ryan Holiday
302. If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it. – John Lennon
303. Greatness comes from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work. It means you’re the least important person in the room — until you change that with results. – Ryan Holiday
304. Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them. T. S. – Eliot
305. There are two circumstances that lead to arrogance: one is when you’re wrong and you can’t face it; the other is when you’re right and nobody else can face it. – Criss Jami
306. Among real friends there is no rivalry or jealousy of one another, but they are satisfied and contented alike whether they are equal or one of them is superior. – Plutarch
307. Next time you find yourself debating someone, try dropping your position entirely and starting from scratch. Walk out of an ego war and into a learning session. – Johnny Uzan
308. Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasure, and you can create for the world a destiny more sublime that ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer. – Sir Walter Scott
309. Comfort and luxury are usually the chief requirements of life for your ego – its top priorities tend to be accumulations, achievements, and the approval of others. – Wayne Dyer
310. Freedom means the power to act by soul guidance, not by the compulsions of desires and habits. Obeying the ego leads to bondage; obeying the soul brings liberation. – Paramahansa Yogananda
311. Love isn’t something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn’t a feeling, it is a practice. – Erich Fromm
312. The true purpose [of Zen] is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes… Zen practice is to open up our small mind. – Shunryu Suzuki
313. Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. – Bertrand Russell
314. Through being “right”, you feel superior and through feeling superior you strengthen your sense of self. In reality, of course, you are only strengthening the illusion of ego. – Eckhart Tolle
315. Never criticize. People are very bad at taking criticism rationally. They take it as a blow to their ego, defend themselves stubbornly, and accuse you back. Resentment ensues. – @TheAncientSage
316. The smaller you can make your ego, the less conditioned you can make your reactions, the less desires you can have about the outcome you want, the easier it to see the reality. – Naval Ravikant
317. Drop jealousy and love wells up. Jealousy means that I am the owner. It is an ego trip, and wherever there is ego there is poison, and the poison kills the very source of love. – Osho
318. I believe that the biggest problem that humanity faces is an ego sensitivity to finding out whether one is right or wrong and identifying what one’s strengths and weaknesses are. – Ray Dalio
319. The foundation of the Buddha’s teachings lies in compassion, and the reason for practicing the teachings is to wipe out the persistence of ego, the number-one enemy of compassion. – Dalai Lama
320. Love means to reach for the sky and with every breath to tear a hundred veils. Love means to step away from the ego, to open the eyes of inner vision and not to take this world so seriously. – Rumi
321. The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist. – Eckhart Tolle
322. There are two kinds of pride, both good and bad. ‘Good pride’ represents our dignity and self-respect. ‘Bad pride’ is the deadly sin of superiority that reeks of conceit and arrogance. John C. – Maxwell
323. People reject what they do not understand because it makes them feel small. They would rather believe in some other reality, even if it is only an illusion, so long as it makes them feel bigger. – Suzy Kassem
324. Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle headedness – and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all, that is what I was at nineteen and twenty. – Mark Twain
325. You can’t learn if you think you already know. You will not find the answers if you’re too conceited and self-assured to ask the questions. You cannot get better if you are convinced you are the best. – Ryan Holiday
326. Jealousy means ego, jealousy means unconsciousness. Jealousy means that you have not known even a moment of joy and bliss; you are living in misery. Jealousy is a by-product of misery, ego, unconsciousness. – Rajneesh
327. All a man has is pride. Sometimes you have it so much it is a sin. We have all done things for pride that we knew were impossible. We didn’t care. But a man must implement his pride with intelligence and care. – Ernest Hemingway
328. Read books that challenge your beliefs and make you feel stupid. You don’t get better by protecting your ego. You get better by exposing it to truth and being vulnerable. This is how you remain fluid and grow. – @TheAncientSage
329. Look for intelligence and judgment and, most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego and the drive to get things done. – Colin Powell
330. To me the ego is the habitual and compulsive thought processes that go through everybody’s mind continuously. External things like possessions or memories or failures or successes or achievements. Your personal history. – Eckhart Tolle
331. The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history. – Bertrand Russell
332. When one is without ego, one becomes infinitely free of all personal judgements, and perceives life and the world with divine eyes and mind. Nothing is offensive to them and they remain in perfect serenity and peace always. – Mooji
333. The poor ego has a still harder time of it; it has to serve three harsh masters, and it has to do its best to reconcile the claims and demands of all three… The three tyrants are the external world, the superego, and the id. – Sigmund Freud
334. Maybe your parents will never be impressed, maybe your girlfriend won’t care. Maybe the investor won’t see the numbers, maybe the audience won’t clap. But we have to be able to push through. We can’t let that be what motivates us. – Ryan Holiday
335. The Ego is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear. – Deepak Chopra
336. I don’t want to see you. I don’t like you. I don’t like your face. You look like an insufferable egotist. You’re impertinent. You’re too sure of yourself. Twenty years ago I would have punched your face with the greatest of pleasure. – Ayn Rand
337. Whenever the world throws rose petals at you, which thrill and seduce the ego, beware. The cosmic banana peel is suddenly going to appear underfoot to make sure you don’t take it all too seriously, that you don’t fill up on junk food. – Anne Lamott
338. You’re not looking for perfection in your partner. Perfection is all about the ego. With soulmate love, you know that true love is what happens when disappointment sets in – and you’re willing to deal maturely with these disappointments. – Karen Salmansohn
339. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man… It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone. C.S. – Lewis
340. To live in the light of a new day and an unimaginable and unpredictable future, you must become fully present to a deeper truth – not a truth from your head, but a truth from your heart; not a truth from your ego, but a truth from the highest source. – Debbie Ford
341. We are vulnerable to the effects of truths we are unwilling to face. Perhaps they threaten our ego or the mental model that structures our routine. Disturbing information is easily rationalized or ignored. Trouble grows in the shadows we fear to illuminate. – @TheStoicEmperor
342. Learning is easier if you are honest about your own ignorance. People want to seem “in the know.” They try to signal that they are intelligent and informed. This is often counterproductive. Insecurity is the enemy of learning. A master knows how to be a beginner. – @TheStoicEmperor
343. Most of us are convinced that we are our egos, which is who we think we are. The ego is part of our incarnation. It dies with the body, which is why we are so afraid of death. Death scares the hell out of who you think you are, especially if you think you are this body. – Ram Dass
344. Many who appear to be seeking widespread popularity are in fact seeking acceptance. Disappointment awaits. Public prominence ensures that you will always be hearing from people who will never accept you. Sensitive people are better off cultivating a few close relationships. – @TheStoicEmperor
345. When you drop ego, you can have great fun because you are no longer taking anything personally. You are a detached observer which has a peculiar joy of its own. Ego is a source of great tension. Egoistic people are anxious, self-defensive and uptight. Drop the ego and chill out. – @TheAncientSage
346. If there’s one skill which can substantially improve the life of every single person, it is emotional self-control. If you drop your ego, don’t take things personally and adopt a detached perspective, your ability to deal with all types of people/situations will immensely improve. – @TheAncientSage
347. Remind yourself how pointless it is to rage and fight and try to one-up those around you. Go and put yourself in touch with the infinite, and end your conscious separation from the world. Reconcile yourself a bit better with the realities of life. Realize how much came before you, and how only wisps of it remain. – Ryan Holiday
348. If your ego starts out, ‘I am important, I am big, I am special,’ you’re in for some disappointments when you look around at what we’ve discovered about the universe. No, you’re not big. No, you’re not. You’re small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that’s limited on Earth. – Neil deGrasse Tyson
349. When you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do. – Shunryu Suzuki
350. It’s not about beating the other guy. It’s not about having more than the others. It’s about being what you are and being as good as possible at it without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It’s about going where you set out to go. About accomplishing the most you’re capable in what you choose. That’s it. No more and no less. – Ryan Holiday
351. Work is finding yourself alone at the track when the weather kept everyone else indoors. It’s pushing through the pain and crappy first drafts and prototypes. It is ignoring whatever plaudits others are getting, and more importantly, ignoring whatever plaudits you may be getting. Because there is work to be done. Work doesn’t want to be good. It is made so, despite the headwind. – Ryan Holiday
352. It has always seemed strange to me… the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. – John Steinbeck
353. Since [narcissists] deep down, feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world’s fault. Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad. They project their own evil onto the world. They never think of themselves as evil, on the other hand, they consequently see much evil in others. M. – Scott Peck
354. Steve Jobs had a remarkable knack for letting go of things that didn’t work. If you were in an argument with him, and you convinced him that you were right, he would instantly change his mind. He didn’t hold on to an idea because he had once believed it to be brilliant. His ego didn’t attach to the suggestions he made, even as he threw his full weight behind them. When Steve saw Pixar’s directors do the same, he recognized them as kindred spirits. – Ed Catmull
355. To meditate is to purge the mind of its self-centered activity. And if you have come this far in meditation, you will find there is silence, a total emptiness. The mind is uncontaminated by society; it is no longer subject to any influence, to the pressure of any desire. It is completely alone, and being alone, untouched it is innocent. Therefore there is a possibility for that which is timeless, eternal, to come into being. This whole process is meditation. – Jiddu Krishnamurti
356. Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition – all such distortions within our own egos – condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That’s how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other’s naked hearts. – Tennessee Williams
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