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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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Nathaniel Branden
Age: 84 †
Born: 1930
Born: April 9
Died: 2014
Died: December 3
Academic
Non-Fiction Writer
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Stuck
Necessarily
Condoning
Determined
Liking
Accept
Enjoying
Accepting
Denial
Enjoy
Evolve
Doe
Leaves
Mean
Acceptance

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Fear and pain should be treated as signals not to close our eyes but to open them wider.
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Your choices have psychological consequences. The way you choose to deal with reality, truth, facts - your choice to honor or dishonor your own perceptions - registers in your mind, for good or for bad, and either confirms and strengthens your self-esteem or undermines and weakens it.
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A woman in love will do almost anything for a man, except give up the desire to improve him.
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There is no value-judgment more important to a man--no factor more decisive in his psychological development and motivation--than the estimate he passes on himself.
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Integrity means congruence. Words and behavior match.
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The policy of seeking values from human beings by means of force, when practiced by an individual, is called crime. When practiced by a government, it is called statism.
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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.
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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.
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... there is an irrational, cultish tendency in many intellectual movements, and Objectivism, alas, is no exception. Ayn Rand's personal obsession with loyalty did little to discourage this trend.... Rand had often protested, 'Protect me from my followers!'
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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.
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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.
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Sometimes pain is easier to bear alone than happiness.
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For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.
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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.
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We are anxious when there is a dissonance between our knowledge and the perceivable facts. Since our knowledge is not to be doubted or questioned, it is the facts that have to be altered.
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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.
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What is guilt? It is moral self-reproach-I did wrong when it was possible to have done otherwise.
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The first love affair you must consummate is the love affair with yourself. Only then are you ready for a romantic relationship.
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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.'
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To live consciously means to seek to be aware of everything that bears on our actions, purposes, values, and goals—to the best of our ability, whatever that ability may be—and to behave in accordance with that which we see and know.
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