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

Nathaniel Branden

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Nathaniel Branden
Age: 84 †
Born: 1930
Born: April 9
Died: 2014
Died: December 3
Academic
Non-Fiction Writer
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Challenges
Become
Great
Remain
Marriage

More quotes by Nathaniel Branden

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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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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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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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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Integrity means congruence. Words and behavior match.
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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Where we see self esteem, we see self acceptance. High self esteem individual tend to avoid falling into an adversarial relationship with themselves.
Nathaniel Branden
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Be careful what you say to your children. They may agree with you.
Nathaniel Branden
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The highest compliment one can be paid by another human being is to be told: 'Because of what you are, you are essential to my happiness.'
Nathaniel Branden
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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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Fear and pain should be treated as signals not to close our eyes but to open them wider.
Nathaniel Branden
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We tend to feel most comfortable, most at home, with people whose self esteem level resembles our own.
Nathaniel Branden
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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
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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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Anyone who really loves you wants you to be authentic. And anyone who doesn't want you to be authentic doesn't really love you.
Nathaniel Branden
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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
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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