Ego Quotes

if you measure
the length
of your ego,
it will equal
the distance
between you
and your freedom
Yung Pueblo, Inward (Page 31)

“Knowledge is always progressing. Don’t let your ego fool you. You are always knowledge’s inferior.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 94)

Live in another’s world.

“Today, or anytime, when you catch yourself wanting to condescendingly drop some knowledge that you have, grab it and ask: Would I be better saying words or letting my actions and choices illustrate that knowledge for me?“
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 137) | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜

“Self-deception, delusions of grandeur—these aren’t just annoying personality traits. Ego is more than just off-putting and obnoxious. Instead, it’s the sworn enemy of our ability to learn and grow.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 84)

Does your mind answer to you or do you answer to it?

“It might make you feel good to dominate the conversation and make it all about you, but how do you think it is for everyone else? Do you think people are really enjoying the highlights of your high school football days? Is this really the time for another exaggerated tale of your sexual prowess? Try your best not to create this fantasy bubble—live in what’s real. Listen and connect with people, don’t perform for them.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 76)

Sometimes destruction is needed.

23 Ryan Holiday Quotes from Ego is the Enemy on Success, Humility, and Work Ethic

Excerpt: Your ego is holding you back from realizing your full potential in life. Read our 23 quotes from Ego is the Enemy to find out how.

“You were born as a no-mind. Let this sink into your heart as deeply as possible because through that, a door opens. If you were born as a no-mind, then the mind is just a social product. It is nothing natural, it is cultivated. It has been put together on top of you. Deep down you are still free, you can get out of it. One can never get out of nature, but one can get out of the artificial any moment one decides to.”
Osho, Courage (Page 16)

Quote on How Your Competition Isn’t Other People—It’s You Versus You.

“Your competition isn’t other people. Your competition is your procrastination. Your ego. The unhealthy food you’re consuming, the knowledge you neglect. The negative behavior you’re nurturing and your lack of creativity. Compete against that.”
Unknown

Beyond the Quote (311/365)

Your competition is your previous self. It always was and always will be. You can choose to compete against other people, but ultimately, it should only be used as a tool to better compete against who you were yesterday. What place you get or how you end up compared to others should always be mentally discarded.

“The ego is cunning, so you have to be very alert, very present, and totally honest with yourself to see whether you have truly relinquished your identification with a mental position and so freed yourself from your mind. If you suddenly feel very light, clear, and deeply at peace, that is an unmistakable sign that you have surrendered. Then observe what happens to the other person’s mental position as you no longer energize it through resistance. When identification with mental positions is out of the way, true communication begins.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 215)

“Whenever two or more egos come together, drama of one kind or another ensues. But even if you live totally alone, you still create your own drama. When you feel sorry for yourself, that’s drama. When you feel guilty or anxious, that’s drama. When you let the past or future obscure the present, you are creating time, psychological time—the stuff out of which drama is made. Whenever you are not honoring the present moment by allowing it to be, you are creating drama.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 182)

“Ego is the unobserved mind that runs your life when you are not present as the witnessing consciousness, the watcher. The ego perceives itself as a separate fragment in a hostile universe, with no real inner connection to any other being, surrounded by other egos which it either sees as a potential threat or which it will attempt to use for its own ends. The basic ego patterns are designed to combat its own deep-seated fear and sense of lack. They are resistance, control, power, greed, defense, attack. Some of the ego’s strategies are extremely clever, yet they never truly solve any of its problems, simply because the ego itself is the problem.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 181)

Napoleon Hill Quote on Being The Master Of Your Destiny and Controlling Influences

“You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.”
Napoleon Hill

Beyond the Quote (161/365)

Influence is the effect one person has on another person’s thoughts and actions. Influence happens every second of every day of your life. Most notably, when you are in direct communication with another person. What another person says and what they do influences you. Either you like what you hear and see and so adjust accordingly, or you dislike what you hear and see and so adjust accordingly the other way. There is no neutral when it comes to interactions because neutral would either mean that you were looking at an exact replica of yourself or that you didn’t notice the other which implies no interaction. We are all so different and unique that we can’t help but influence each other in one way or another.

“There is no stillness to the mind that thinks of nothing but itself, nor will there ever be peace for the body and spirit that follow their every urge and value nothing but themselves.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 137)

A difference worth noting.

“Suffering is the state of mind that regards itself as real. We can spend our whole life trying to create a solid, lasting self. We can spend our whole life looking outside ourselves for something to reflect this delusion of solidity, to be as real and lasting as we wish ourselves to be. Search though we will, it’s impossible to find what doesn’t exist, and the perpetual search causes suffering.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 14)

“The harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain. The mind can never find the solution, nor can it afford to allow you to find the solution, because it is itself an intrinsic part of the ‘problem.’ Imagine a chief of police trying to find an arsonist when the arsonist is the chief of police. You will not be free of that pain until you cease to derive your sense of self from identification with the mind, which is to say from ego.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 28)

“Everyone has an ego. Ego drives the most successful people in life—in the SEAL Teams, in the military, in the business world. They want to win, to be the best. That is good. But when ego clouds our judgment and prevents us from seeing the world as it is, then ego becomes destructive. When personal agendas become more important than the team and the overarching mission’s success, performance suffers and failure ensues. Many of the disruptive issues that arise within any team can be attributed directly to a problem with ego.” ~ Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership (Page 100)