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Nathaniel Branden Inspirational Quotes (82)

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Accepting does not necessarily mean liking, enjoying, condoning. I can accept what is-and be determined to evolve from there. It is not acceptance but denial that leaves me stuck.
Nathaniel Branden
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Moved by a passion they do not understand for a goal they seldom reach, men and women are haunted by the vision of a distant possibility that refuses to be extinguished.
Nathaniel Branden
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It's not that achievements prove our worth but rather that the process of achieving is the means by which we develop our effectiveness, our competence at living.
Nathaniel Branden
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A goal without an action plan is a daydream.
Nathaniel Branden
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Either you will make your life work, or your life will not work.
Nathaniel Branden
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Out of fear, out of the desire for approval, out of the 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.
Nathaniel Branden
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A commitment to lifelong learning is a natural expression of the practice of living consciously.
Nathaniel Branden
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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
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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
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To exist without purpose is to be at the mercy of the chance encounter, the chance invitation, the chance phone call, the chance event- always being controlled by forces external to oneself.
Nathaniel Branden
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Fear and pain should be treated as signals not to close our eyes but to open them wider.
Nathaniel Branden
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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
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If you overcome your fear to ask someone for a date, a raise, or help with a project, that is an act of self-assertiveness. You are moving out into life rather than contracting and withdrawing.
Nathaniel Branden
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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
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High self esteem people can surely be knocked down by an excess of troubles, but they are quickerto pick themselves up again.
Nathaniel Branden
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The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.
Nathaniel Branden
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A bully hides his fears with fake bravado. That is the opposite of self-assertiveness.
Nathaniel Branden
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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
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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
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It would be hard to name a more certain sign of poor self-esteem than the need to perceive some other group as inferior.
Nathaniel Branden
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The ultimate test of our integrity is not how we deal with those whom we agree but how we deal with those who we do not agree.
Nathaniel Branden
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Freedom is still the most radical idea of all.
Nathaniel Branden
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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
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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
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