Nathaniel Branden famous quotes

The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Change #Acceptance #Second Chance

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

#Mean #Thinking #Self

Self esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Motivational #Self Esteem #Self Respect

Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Inspirational #Positive #Self Esteem

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

#Strong #Children #Self

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

#Leadership #Motivation #Commitment

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

#Inspirational #Confidence #Teacher

Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Depression #Acceptance #Self

Live with integrity, respect the rights of other people, and follow your own bliss.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Integrity #Rights #People

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

#Inspirational #Self Esteem #Caring

How do we nurture the soul? By revering our own life. By learning to love it all, not only the joys and the victories, but also the pain and the struggles.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Pain #Struggle #Joy

Anyone who engages in the practice of psychotherapy confronts every day the devastation wrought by the teachings of religion.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Atheist #Teaching #Practice

A bully hides his fears with fake bravado. That is the opposite of self-assertiveness.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Opposites #Self #Bully

A depression is a large-scale decline in production and trade...there is nothing in the nature of a free-market economy to cause such an event.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Events #Causes #Economy

The more you surrender to the fear of someone's disapproval, the more you lose face in your own eyes, and the more desperate you become for someone's approval. Within you is a void that should have been filled by self-esteem. When you attempt to fill it with the approval of others instead, the void grows deeper and the hunger for acceptance and approval grows stronger. The only solution is to summon the courage to honor your own judgment, frightening though that may be in the beginning.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Self Esteem #Eye #Acceptance

Even when our life is most difficult, it is important to remember that something within us is keeping us alive- the life force-that lift us, energizes us, pulls us back sometimes from the abyss of despair. True spirituality does not exist without love of life.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Love Life #Important #Despair

The greatest barrier to achievement and success is not lack of talent or ability but rather the feeling that achievement and success, above a certain level, are outside our self-concept-our image of who we are and what is appropriate to us.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Self #Achievement #Feelings

A commitment to lifelong learning is a natural expression of the practice of living consciously.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Commitment #Expression #Practice

Reason and emotion are not antagonists. What seems like a struggle between two opposing ideas or values, one of which, automatic and unconscious, manifests itself in the form of a feeling.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Struggle #Ideas #Two

A goal without an action plan is a daydream.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Goal #Planning #Action

The stability we cannot find in the world, we must create within our own persons.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#World #Stability #Persons

When your principles seem to be demanding suicide, clearly it's time to check your premises
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Suicide #Principles #Checks

To trust one's mind and to know that one is worthy of happiness is the essence of self-esteem.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Confidence #Self Esteem #Essence

We are anxious when there is a dissonance between our "knowledge" and the perceivable facts. Since our "knowledge" is not to be doubted or questioned, it is the facts that have to be altered...
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Truth #Facts #Dissonance

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

#Live Life #Important #Done

If we do have realistic confidence ... if we feel secure within ourselves, we tend to experience the world as open to us and to respond appropriately to challenges and opportunities. Self-esteem empowers, energizes, motivates. It inspires us to achieve and allows us to take pleasure and pride in our achievements.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Confidence #Self Esteem #Pride

There is no value-judgment more important to a man--no factor more decisive in his psychological development and motivation--than the estimate he passes on himself.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Confidence #Motivation #Men

It is generally recognized that creativity requires leisure, an absence of rush, time for the mind and imagination to float and wander and roam, time for the individual to descend into the depths of his or her psyche, to be available to barely audible signals rustling for attention. Long periods of time may pass in which nothing seems to be happening. But we know that kind of space must be created if the mind is to leap out of its accustomed ruts, to part from the mechanical, the known, the familiar, the standard, and generate a leap into the new.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Creativity #Space #Imagination

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

#Love Is #Self #Expression

The music that inspires the souls of lovers exists within themselves and the private universe they occupy. They share it with each other; they do not share it with the tribe or with society. The courage to hear that music and to honor it is one of the prerequisites of romantic love.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Love #Soul #Inspire

We do not hear the term compassionate applied to business executives or entrepreneurs, certainly not when they are engaged in their normal work. Yet in terms of results in the measurable form of jobs created, lives enriched, communities built, living standards raised, and poverty healed, a handful of capitalists has done infinitely more for mankind than all the self-serving politicians, academics, social workers, and religionists who march under the banner of compassion.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Jobs #Compassion #Self

To attain "success" without attaining positive self-esteem is to be condemned to feeling like an imposter anxiously awaiting exposure.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Self Esteem #Feelings #Exposure

As you grow in self-esteem, your face, manner, way of talking and moving will tend naturally to project the pleasure you take in being alive.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Self Esteem #Moving #Talking

You have a right to your feelings. Your feelings are there to tell you something, but they are not infallible guides to behavior.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Feelings #Behavior #Guides

Romantic love is a passionate spiritual-emotional-sexual attachment between a man and a woman that reflects a high regard for the value of each other's person.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Love #Spiritual #Men

Productive achievement is a consequence and an expression of health and self-esteem, not its cause.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Self Esteem #Expression #Accomplishment

The higher our self-esteem, the stronger the drive to express ourselves, reflecting the sense of richness within. The lower our self-esteem, the more urgent the need to "prove" ourselves or to forget ourselves by living mechanically and unconsciously.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Self Esteem #Stronger #Needs

For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Reality #Men #Healthy

Integrity is the integration of ideals, convictions, standards, beliefs-and behavior. When our behavior is congruent with our professed values, when ideals and practice match up, we have integrity.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Integrity #Practice #Belief

Either you will make your life work, or your life will not work.
-- 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

#Issues #Battle #Goes On

Capitalism, by its nature, entails a constant process of motion, growth and progress.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Growth #Progress #Process

Respect starts with ourselves.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Self Esteem #Esteem

Whether in the workplace or in personal relationships, success belongs to those who are willing to take responsibility for attaining their desires-those who respond to life actively rather than passively.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Success #Responsibility #Desire

Force, governmental coercion, is the instrument by which the ethics of altruism - the belief that the individual exists to serve others - is translated into political reality.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Reality #Government #Political

When we bury our feelings, we also bury ourselves. It means we exist in a state of alienation. We rarely know it, but we are lonely for ourselves.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Lonely #Mean #Healing

Living consciously is seeking to be aware of everything that bears on our interests, actions, values, purposes, and goals. It is the willingness to confront facts, pleasant or unpleasant. It is the desire to discover our mistakes and correct them . . . it is the quest to keep expanding our awareness and understanding, both of the world external to self and the world within.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Mistake #Self #Goal

The policy of seeking values from human beings by means of force, when practiced by an individual, is called crime. When practiced by a government, it is called statism ...
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Mean #Government #Individualism

Most of us are taught from an early age to pay far more attention to signals coming from other people than from within. We are encouraged to ignore our own needs and wants and to concentrate on living up to others expectations.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#People #Expectations #Age

Be careful what you say to your children. They may agree with you.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Children #May #Be Careful

For children mastery entails struggle. This means they must be permitted to struggle. If parents inappropriately step in to "help"-out of impatience or solicitude-they sabotage important learning. Among other things, the child is unlikely to discover the advantages of perseverance and self-discipline.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Perseverance #Children #Struggle

Your life is important. Fight for it. Honour your highest potentials.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Self Esteem #Fighting #Important

High self esteem people can surely be knocked down by an excess of troubles, but they are quickerto pick themselves up again.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Self Esteem #People #Excess

For "I" to become "we" and yet remain "I," is one of the great challenges of marriage.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Marriage #Challenges

... there is an irrational, cultish tendency in many intellectual movements, and Objectivism, alas, is no exception. Ayn Rand's personal obsession with loyalty did little to discourage this trend.... Rand had often protested, 'Protect me from my followers!'
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Loyalty #Intellectual #Followers

One of the characteristics of love relationships that flower is a relatively high degree of mutual self-disclosure - a willingness to let our partner enter into the interior of our private world and a genuine interest in the private world of that partner. Couples in love tend to show more of themselves to each other than to any other person....
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Couple #Flower #Love You

To preserve an unclouded capacity for the enjoyment of life is an unusual moral and psychological achievement. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the prerogative of mindlessness, but the exact opposite: It is the reward of self-esteem.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Self Esteem #Opposites #Achievement

One of the hardest expressions of self-assertiveness is challenging your limiting beliefs.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Self #Expression #Challenges

Self-esteem is a powerful force within each of us... Self-esteem is the experience that we are appropriate to life and to the requirements of life.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Powerful #Self Esteem #Self Respect

One of the most significant characteristics of healthy self esteem is that it is the state of one who is not at war either with himself or with others.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Inspirational #War #Self Esteem

If you are terrified of making mistakes, you will be reluctant to acknowledge them when you do make them-and therefore you will not correct them.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Mistake #Making Mistakes #Acknowledge

The desire for self-esteem without integrity is like the desire for wealth without effort-a longing for the unearned.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Self Esteem #Integrity #Effort

You are not likely to bring out the best in people or nurture their creativity if every time you hear about their problems you instantly offer a solution Encourage people to look for their own solutions-and project the knowledge that they are capable of doing so.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Encouragement #Creativity #People

The first love affair you must consummate is the love affair with yourself. Only then are you ready for a romantic relationship.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Love You #First Love #Love Relationship

You can be loved by your family, your mate, and your friends yet not love yourself. You can be admired by your associates yet regard yourself as worthless. You can project an image of assurance and poise that fools almost everyone yet secretly tremble with a sense of inadequacy. You can fulfill the expectations of others yet fail your own. You can win every honor yet feel that you have accomplished nothing. What shall it profit a person to gain the esteem of the whole world yet lose his or her own?
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Love You #Winning #Expectations

An emotion is both a mental and a physical event.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Events #Emotion

The reputation you have with yourself - your self-esteem - is the single most important factor for a fulfilling life.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Self Esteem #Important #Reputation

Suppose you feel you cannot accept some fact about yourself. Then own your refusal to accept. Own the block. Embrace it fully. And watch it begin to disappear. The principal is this: Begin where you are-accept that. Then change and growth become possible.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Block #Acceptance #Growth

Romantic love can be terrifying. We experience another human being as enormously important to us. So there is surrender -not a surrender to the other person so much as to our feeling for the other person. What is the obstacle? The possibility of loss.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Happiness #Loss #Romantic Love

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

#Integrity #Self #Honor

To live consciously means to seek to be aware of everything that bears on our actions, purposes, values, and goals—to the best of our ability, whatever that ability may be—and to behave in accordance with that which we see and know.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Mean #Goal #Purpose

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

#Spiritual #Self Esteem #Luxury

If you choose not to live self-responsibly, you count on others to make up your default. No one abjures self-responsibility on a desert island.
-- Nathaniel Branden

#Responsibility #Self #Islands