Comparison Quotes
“I think it is easy to imagine there are easier paths. But maybe there are no easy paths. There are just paths. In one life, I might be married. In another, I might be working in a shop. I might have said yes to this cute guy who asked me out for a coffee. In another I might be researching glaciers in the Arctic Circle. In another, I might be an Olympic swimming champion. Who knows? Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.”
Matt Haig, The Midnight Library (Page 179)
“If you do not compare yourself with another you will be what you are. Through comparison you hope to evolve, to grow, to become more intelligent, more beautiful. But will you? The fact is what you are, and by comparing you are fragmenting the fact which is a waste of energy. To see what you actually are without any comparison gives you tremendous energy to look. When you can look at yourself without comparison you are beyond comparison, which does not mean that the mind is stagnant with contentment.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 64)
“We are always comparing what we are with what we should be. The should-be is a projection of what we think we ought to be. Contradiction exists when there is comparison, not only with something or somebody, but with what you were yesterday, and hence there is conflict between what has been and what is. There is what is only when there is no comparison at all, and to live with what is, is to be peaceful. Then you can give your whole attention without any distraction to what is within yourself—whether it be despair, ugliness, brutality, fear, anxiety, loneliness—and live with it completely; then there is no contradiction and hence no conflict.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 63)
“If I am all the time measuring myself against you, struggling to be like you, then I am denying what I am myself. Therefore I am creating an illusion. Comparison in any form leads only to greater illusion and greater misery.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 32)
“Literally from the first doctor’s visit with your newborn, they are telling you how your kid stacks up against other kids—their height and weight percentile, etc etc. It never stops…unless you stop it. You are not raising the average child, you are raising YOUR child. How many of the things you’re worried about as a parent would worry you if you didn’t know or didn’t look at what other families were doing?”
Ryan Holiday
“While competition certainly makes sense in the world of sports—where at the end of each game somebody wins and somebody loses—there’s no place for competition in the arts. One way to determine whether or not art is ‘successful’ is if it’s original. Ironically, it’s impossible to be original in the arts if you’re competing with another artist, because to compete is to agree you are playing the same game. And so in art, to compete is to lose.”
Cole Schafer
“Envy is perhaps the ugliest human emotion. Destroy it before it destroys you. Develop your sense of self-worth from internal standards and not incessant comparisons.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 359)
