Nathaniel Branden

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

"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?"

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

"It is a mistake to look at someone who is self assertive and say, "It's easy for her, she has good self-esteem." One of the ways you build self-esteem is by being self-assertive when it is not easy to do so. There are always times when self-assertiveness requires courage, no matter how high your 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."

"Out of fear, out of the desire for approval, out of misguided notions of duty, people surrender themselves--their convictions and their aspirations--every day. There is nothing noble about it. It takes far more courage to fight for your values than to relinquish them."

"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."

"Integrity is congruence between what you know, what you profess, and what you do."

"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."

"We are parts of one universe, true enough. We stand within an almost infinite network of relationships. Yet each of us is a single point of consciousness, a unique event, a private, unrepeatable world. This is the essence of our aloneness."

"The challenge for people today--and it is not and easy one--is to maintain high personal standards even while feeling that one is living in a moral sewer."

"Self-discipline is the ability to organize your behavior over time in the service of specific goals."

"All positive interactions with other human beings involve, to some degree, the experience of visibility-- that is, the experience of being seen and understood."