Great Throughts Treasury

"He says the way out is through - the emotions are messages, experience them fully - don't be afraid of them- but he doesn't give much help on how to manage emotions - he just repeats "the way out is through.""

"I have been a non-conformist, a rebel, different."

"I cannot remember a time when the question of why people behave as they do was not intensely interesting to me. The desire to understand was very important. When I was young, I was aware of the fact that much of the time, the reasons a person gave for his actions were not the actual reasons."

"I first lectured on self-esteem and its impact on love, work, and the struggle for happiness in the 1950's and published my first articles on the subject in the 1960's. The challenge then was to gain public understanding of its importance. "Self-esteem" was not yet an expression in widespread use. Today, the danger may be that the idea has become fashionable. It is on everyone's tongue, which is not to say that it is better understood. Yet if we are unclear about its precise meaning and about the specific factors its successful attainment depends on -- if we are careless in our thinking, or succumb to the oversimplifications and sugar-coatings of pop psychology -- then the subject will suffer a fate worse than being ignored. It will become trivialized. That is why...we begin our inquiry...with an examination of what self-esteem is and is not."

"I have felt controlled, underestimated, envious, judgmental, needy, afraid, worried, compulsive, urgent, pressured, passionate, different, invalidated, superior."

"I remember as a child being enormously bewildered by the behavior of adults. I perceived the strangeness of superficiality in their values, a lack of congruence between their statements and feelings, an anxiety that seemed to saturate much of the atmosphere around me. And an overwhelming sense that often the adults did not know what they were doing. It seemed to me they were lost and helpless, while pretending to be in control. This experience was painful and sometimes frightening. I desperately wanted to understand why people behaved as they did. Somewhere in my mind, at quite a young age there must have been a conviction that knowledge is power, safety, security, serenity."

"For somebody who presents herself as a champion of the joy of living, [Rand] has very rigid rules about the path you must walk on in your pursuit of enjoyment. Of all the objections to Objectivism, none is stupider than the claim that we are a hedonistic philosophy. Man, we are as rigid as the Catholic Church in the 13th century, you know?"

"I won't be let down when things don't happen as I envision - People won't invalidate me and think I am crazy, or childish."

"I think that we approach the problem of romantic love all wrong when we start with the questions: why do so many relationships fail? I think that the interesting question is why do some succeed? Because if you consider how most of us were raised, how most of us were brought up, how few of us had decent role models in terms of our fathers or mothers, how inadequately we were prepared or educated for love as adults; it seems to me that the great miracle is that some people through their own independence, or their own perseverance, or their own creativity, make it."

"If parents do everything right, it does not follow necessarily that their children will grow up with healthy self-esteem. Life is more complex than that. Children play an active role in their own development; they are not merely passive clay on which biology and environment write. Parents' behavior can be impeccable, and yet the child may grow up insecure and self-doubting. And it sometimes happens that parents seemingly do everything wrong, and yet the child does well in school, forms good relationships, operates self-responsibly, and gives all the evidence of having a good level of self-esteem. It is almost as if these children were put on earth to drive psychologists crazy."

"If one error is to deny the importance of self-esteem, another is to claim too much for it. In their enthusiasm, some writers today seem to suggest that a healthy sense of self-value is all we need to assure happiness and success. The matter is more complex than that. Self-esteem is not an all-purpose panacea. Aside from the question of the external circumstances and opportunities that may exist for us, a number of internal factors clearly have an impact -- such as energy level, intelligence, and achievement drive. (Contrary to what we sometimes hear, this last is not correlated with self-esteem in any simple or direct way, in that such a drive can be powered by negative motivation as well as by positive, as, for example, when one is propelled by fear of losing love or status rather than by the joy of self-expression.) A well-developed sense of self is a necessary condition of our well-being but it is not a sufficient condition. Its presence does not guarantee fulfillment, but its lack guarantees some measure of anxiety, frustration or despair."

"If rationality entails respect for the facts of reality, that includes the facts concerning our own psychological state."

"If the aim is to prove that I am enough the project goes on to infinity because the battle was already lost on the day you conceded the issue was debatable."

"If we do not believe in ourselves- neither in our efficacy nor in our goodness- the universe is a frightening place."

"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."

"If we are happy within ourselves, we don't accept or demand that our partner should fulfill every need. We need to be comfortable with our own company."

"If you love somebody, you have to respect his or her individuality and uniqueness. Understand that he or she is not a mirror image of you and will not always behave exactly as you would behave."

"If you overcome your fear to ask someone for a date, or 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."

"If you want people to be honest with you, don?t punish them for telling the truth."

"If, in any culture, children are taught, ?We are all equally unworthy in the sight of God.? If, in any culture, children are taught, ?You are born in sin and are sinful by nature.? If children are given a message that amounts to ?Don't think, don't question, *believe.? If children are given a message that amounts to ?Who are you to place your mind above that of the priest, the minister, the rabbi?? If children are told, ?If you have value it is not because of anything you have done or could ever do, it is only because God loves you.? If children are told, ?Submission to what you cannot understand is the beginning of morality.? If children are instructed, ?Do not be willful, self-assertiveness is the sin of pride.? If children are instructed, ?Never think that you belong to yourself.? If children are informed, ?In any clash between your judgment and that of your religious authorities, it is your authorities you must believe.? If children are informed, ?Self-sacrifice is the foremost virtue and the noblest duty.? Then *consider what will be the likely consequences for the practice of living consciously, or the practice of self-assertiveness, or any of the other pillars of healthy self-esteem."

"In ?The Six Pillars of Self Esteem,? I examine the six practices that I have found to be essential for the nurturing and sustaining of healthy self-esteem: the practice of living consciously, of self-acceptance, of self-responsibility, of self-assertiveness, of purposefulness, and of integrity. I will briefly define what each of these practices means."

"In the world of the future, children will be taught the basic dynamics of self-esteem and the power of living consciously and self-responsibly. They will be taught what self-esteem is, why it is important, and what it depends on. They will learn to distinguish between authentic self-esteem and pseudo-self-esteem. They will be guided to acquire this knowledge because it will have become apparent to virtually everyone that the ability to think (and to learn and to respond confidently to change) is our basic means of survival ? and that it cannot be faked. The purpose of school is to prepare young people for the challenges of adult life. They will need this understanding to be adaptive to an information age in which self-esteem has acquired such urgency. In a fiercely competitive global economy ? with every kind of change happening faster and faster ? there is little market for unconsciousness, passivity, or self-doubt. In the language of business, low self-esteem and underdeveloped mindfulness puts one at a competitive disadvantage. However, neither teachers in general nor teachers of self-esteem in particular can do their jobs properly ? or communicate the importance of their work ? until they themselves understand the intimate linkage that exists between the six practices described above, self-esteem, and appropriate adaptation to reality. ?The world of the future? begins with this understanding."

"It is painful to face the self we know we have never had the integrity to honor and assert."

"It would be hard to name a more certain sign of poor self-esteem than the need to perceive some other group as inferior."

"It is not enough to have a good idea. You must develop it, fight for it, work to win supporters for it, do everything in your power to see that it gets translated into reality."

"It is humiliating to realize that when you drive yourself underground, when you fake who you are, often you do so for people you do not even like or respect."

"Most of the failings of Objectivism all pertain directly or indirectly to issues of psychology."

"Most of the time, I regard the judgment of people as a waste of time. I regard the judgment of behavior as imperative."

"No pain is so destructive as the one you refuse to face."

"No one can be integrated, no one can function harmoniously, no one can think clearly and effectively about the deep issues of life who is oblivious to the internal signals, manifested as feelings and emotions, rising from within the organism. My formula for this is: "Feel deeply to think clearly." It seems, however, to take a long time -- for objectivists and nonobjectivists alike -- to understand that fully. Most of us have been encouraged to deny and repress who we are, to disown our feelings, to disown important aspects of the self, almost from the day we were born. The road back to selfhood usually entails a good deal of struggle and courage."

"Live with integrity, respect the rights of other people, and follow your own bliss."

"No suffering is so enduring as that which you refuse to acknowledge."

"Objectivism comes on, sometimes, as if the most important issue you have to understand is the issue of egoism versus altruism. But that?s nowhere near the beginning of the process."

"Not a great deal is known about the factors in childhood that doubtless underlie a person's choice of career - I'm talking now about a career to which one is passionately committed, in contradistinction to a career chosen merely as a means of earning a living."

"No you just have to be willing to endure the pain and suffering but also have to take the loneliness, the stark reality that the little girl was once had-not-will never have parents who needed and would desired."

"Of all the accusations of her critics, surely the most ludicrous is the accusation that Ayn Rand encourages people to do just what they please. If there's anything in this world Ayn did not do, it was to encourage people to do what they please. If there is anything she was not, it was an advocate of hedonism. She may have taught that "Man's Life" is the standard of morality and your own life is its purpose, but the path she advocated to the fulfillment of your life was a severely disciplined one. She left many of her readers with the clear impression that life is a tightrope and that it is all too easy to fall off into moral depravity. In other words, on the one hand she preached a morality of joy, personal happiness, and individual fulfillment; on the other hand, she was a master at scaring the hell out of you if you respected and admired her and wanted to apply her philosophy to your own life."

"Of all the nonsense written about love, none is more absurd than the notion that ideal love is selfless. To love is to see myself in you and to wish to celebrate myself with you. What I love is the embodiment of my values in another person. Love is an act of self-assertion, self-expression and a celebration of being alive."

"Omitting cases where you are literally coerced, as when someone points a gun at you, you are responsible for your reactions. No one "makes" you enraged to the point of turning violent. No one "makes" you become sarcastic and abusive. No one "makes" you do the things you are ashamed to take responsibility for."

"Out of fear, out of the desire for approval, out of 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."

"Our souls are more than our philosophies -- and certainly more than our conscious philosophies. Just as we need to know more than a human being's philosophical beliefs in order to understand that human being; so, we need to know more than a society's or culture's philosophical beliefs to understand the events of a given historical period. Of course, the philosophical ideas of a society or a culture play a powerful role in determining the flow of events."

"Our motive is not to prove our self-worth, but to live up to our possibilities."

"One difficulty with much of the research concerning the impact of self-esteem, as I said in the Introduction, is that different researchers use different definitions of the term and are not necessarily measuring or reporting the same phenomenon. Another difficulty is that self-esteem does not operate in a vacuum; it can be hard to track in isolation; it interacts with other forces in the personality."

"One does not need to be a trained psychologist to know that some people with low self-esteem strive to compensate for their deficit by boasting, arrogance, and conceited behavior. What educated person does not know about compensatory defense mechanisms? Self-esteem is not manifested in the neurosis we call narcissism ? or in megalomania. One has to have a strange notion of the concept to equate in self-esteem the trail-blazing scientist or entrepreneur, moved by intellectual self-trust and a passion to discover or achieve, and the terrorist who must sustain his ?high self-evaluation? with periodic fixes of torture and murder. To offer both types as instances of ?high self-esteem? is to empty the term of any usable meaning."

"People begin to pretend they don't have needs that have long been denied [first to them, then by them]."

"People can be inspired, stimulated, or coached to live more consciously, practice greater self-acceptance, operate more self-responsibly, function more self-assertively, live more purposefully, and bring a higher level of personal integrity into their life ? but the task of generating and sustaining these practices falls on each of us alone. ?If I bring a higher level of awareness to my self-esteem, I see that mine is the responsibility of nurturing it.? No one ? not our parents, nor our friends, nor our lover, nor our psychotherapist, nor our support group ? can ?give? us self-esteem. If and when we fully grasp this, that is an act of ?waking up.?"

"Pride is the emotional reward of achievement. It is not a vice to be overcome but a virtue to be attained."

"Reason and emotion do not have to be adversaries -- and shouldn't be."

"Productive achievement is a consequence and an expression of health and self-esteem, not its cause."

"Reason is the process which allows us to organize and integrate the contents of our awareness."

"Reason is at once a faculty and a process of identifying and integrating the data present or given in awareness. Reason means integration in accordance with the law of non-contradiction. If you think of it in these terms -- as a process of non-contradictory integration -- it's difficult to imagine how anyone could be opposed to it. Here is the problem: There is a difference between reason as a process and what any person or any group of people, at any time in history, may regard as "the reasonable." This is a distinction that very few people are able to keep clear. We all exist in history, not just in some timeless vacuum, and probably none of us can entirely escape contemporary notions of "the reasonable." It's always important to remember that reason or rationality, on the one hand, and what people may regard as "the reasonable," on the other hand, don't mean the same thing. The consequence of failing to make this distinction, and this is markedly apparent in the case of Ayn Rand, is that if someone disagrees with your notion of "the reasonable," it can feel very appropriate to accuse him or her of being "irrational" or "against reason.""