Nathaniel Branden > Quotes

“The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“How do we keep our inner fire alive? Two things, at minimum, are needed: an ability to appreciate the positives in our life – and a commitment to action. Every day, it's important to ask and answer these questions: ‘What's good in my life?’ and ‘What needs to be done?”
― Nathaniel Branden

“Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“Some people stand and move as if they have no right to the space they occupy. They wonder why others often fail to treat them with respect--not realizing that they have signalled others that it is not necessary to treat them with respect.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“We must become what we wish to teach.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity.”
― Nathaniel Branden

“If my aim is to prove I am “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

“Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. When man rejects reason as his standard of judgement, only one alternative standard remains to him: his feelings. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feelings with knowledge”
― Nathaniel Branden, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.”
― Nathaniel Branden

“It is naive to think that self-assertiveness is easy. To live self-assertively--which means to live authentically--is an act of high courage. That is why so many people spend the better part of their lives in hiding--from others and also from themselves.”
― Nathaniel Branden

“Self-discipline is the ability to organize your behavior over time in the service of specific goals.”
― Nathaniel Branden

“Integrity is congruence between what you know, what you profess, and what you do.”
― Nathaniel Branden

“When we learn how to be in an intimate relationship without abandoning our sense of self, when we learn how to be kind without being self-sacrificing, when we learn how to cooperate with others without betraying our standards and convictions, we are practicing self-assertiveness.”
― Nathaniel Branden, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“No one is coming to save you; no one is coming to make life right for you; no one is coming to solve your problems. If you don’t do something, nothing is going to get better. The dream of a rescuer who will deliver us may offer a kind of comfort, but it leaves us passive and powerless. We may feel if only I suffer long enough, if only I yearn desperately enough, somehow a miracle will happen, but this is the kind of self-deception one pays for with one’s life as it drains away into the abyss of unredeemable possibilities and irretrievable days, months, decades.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“Regardless of what we think we're teaching, we teach what we are.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“Never marry a person who is not a friend of your excitement.”
― Nathaniel Branden, The Psychology of Romantic Love

“Genuine self esteem – please understand this – genuine self esteem is not competitive or comparative. Genuine self esteem isn’t expressed by self-glorification at the expense of others, or by trying to make yourself superior to everyone else, or diminishing others in order to elevate yourself. Arrogance, boastfulness, the overestimation of your abilities, reflect low self esteem, even though we’re often encouraged to believe the opposite. In human beings, joy in the simple fact of existence is a core meaning of healthy self esteem. Thus understood, how can you possibly have too much of it?”
― Nathaniel Branden

“What is required for many of us, paradoxical though it may sound, is the courage to tolerate happiness without self-sabotage.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“I think that we approach the problem of romantic love all wrong when we start with the questions: why do so many relationships fail? I think that the interesting question is why do some succeed? Because if you consider how most of us were raised, how most of us were brought up, how few of us had decent role models in terms of our fathers or mothers, how inadequately we were prepared or educated for love as adults; it seems to me that the great miracle is that some people through their own independence, or their own perseverance, or their own creativity, make it.”
― Nathaniel Branden

“Self-esteem is not a luxury; it is a profound spiritual need.”
― Nathaniel Branden

“It is humiliating to realize that when you drive yourself underground, when you fake who you are, often you do so for people you do not even like or respect.”
― Nathaniel Branden

“It is painful to face the self we know we have never had the integrity to honor and assert.”
― Nathaniel Branden

“When we have unconflicted self-esteem, joy is our motor, not fear. It is happiness that we wish to experience, not suffering that we wish to avoid. Our purpose is self-expression, not self-avoidance or self-justification. Our motive is not to “prove” our worth but to live our possibilities.”
― Nathaniel Branden, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“To love is to see myself in you and to wish to celebrate myself with you. What I love is the embodiment of my values in another person. Love is an act of self-assertion, self-expression and a celebration of being alive.”
― Nathaniel Branden

“Your life is important. Honor it. Fight for your highest possibilities.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“The opposite of self-assertiveness is self-abnegation--abandoning or submerging your personal values, judgment, and interests. Some people tell themselves this is a virtue. It is a "virtue" that corrodes self-esteem.”
― Nathaniel Branden

“In addition, if a person makes the error of identifying self with his work (rather than with the internal virtues that make the work possible), if self-esteem is tied primarily to accomplishments, success, income, or being a good family provider, the danger is that economic circumstances beyond the individual’s control may lead to the failure of the business or the loss of a job, flinging him into depression or acute demoralization.”
― Nathaniel Branden, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“In the inner courtroom of my mind, mine is the only judgment that counts.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

“The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of the body. The child's primary business is learning. It is also the primary entertainment. To retain that orientation into adulthood, so that consciousness is not a burden but a joy, is the mark of the successfully developed human being.”
― Nathaniel Branden

“A mind that trusts itself is light on its feet.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem