Quote

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.

Nathaniel Branden

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Nathaniel Branden
Age: 84 †
Born: 1930
Born: April 9
Died: 2014
Died: December 3
Academic
Non-Fiction Writer
Psychologist
Psychotherapist
Individual
Individualism
Means
Seeking
Government
Beings
Human
Crime
Humans
Policy
Mean
Called
Values
Statism
Force
Practiced

More quotes by Nathaniel Branden

Image
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
Image
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
Image
The practice of assertiveness: being authentic in our dealings with others treating our values and persons with decent respect in social contexts refusing to fake the reality of who we are or what we esteem in order to avoid disapproval the willingness to stand up for ourselves and our ideas in appropriate ways in appropriate contexts.
Nathaniel Branden
Image
The reputation you have with yourself - your self-esteem - is the single most important factor for a fulfilling life.
Nathaniel Branden
Image
Loving consciously does not mean subjecting your relationship to endless analysis. It means something much simpler: paying attention. Noticing. This requires presence.
Nathaniel Branden
Image
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.
Nathaniel Branden
Image
Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.
Nathaniel Branden
Image
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
Image
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.
Nathaniel Branden
Image
It is painful to face the self we know we have never had the integrity to honor and assert.
Nathaniel Branden
Image
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
Image
The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.
Nathaniel Branden
Image
The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.
Nathaniel Branden
Image
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
Image
Self-esteem is a powerful force within each of us... Self-esteem is the experience that we are appropriate to life and to the requirements of life.
Nathaniel Branden
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The stability we cannot find in the world, we must create within our own persons.
Nathaniel Branden
Image
For I to become we and yet remain I, is one of the great challenges of marriage.
Nathaniel Branden
Image
There is only one reality - the reality knowable to reason. And if man does not choose to perceive it, there is nothing else for him to perceive if it is not of this world that he is conscious, then he is not conscious at all
Nathaniel Branden