Nathaniel Branden Quotes

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.

Whether in the workplace or in personal relationships, success belongs to those who are willing to take responsibility for attaining their desires-those who respond to life actively rather than passively.

Romantic love can be terrifying. We experience another human being as enormously important to us. So there is surrender -not a surrender to the other person so much as to our feeling for the other person. What is the obstacle? The possibility of loss.

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.

In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions.

The stability we cannot find in the world, we must create within our own persons.

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.

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.

Reason and emotion are not antagonists. What seems like a struggle between two opposing ideas or values, one of which, automatic and unconscious, manifests itself in the form of a feeling.

If we attach more importance to what other people believe than to what we know to be true - if we value belonging over being - we will not attain authenticity.

Sometimes pain is easier to bear alone than happiness.

What a great teacher, a great parent, a great psychotherapist and a great coach have in common is a deep belief in the potential of the person with whom they are concerned. They relate to the person from their vision of his or her worth and value.

Your life is important. Whether you achieve what you want in life matters. Whether you are happy matters. Honor and fight for your highest potential. Self-realizatio n-the realization of the best within you-is the noblest goal of your existence.

If you do not feel deserving of happiness, consciously or subconsciously, or if you have accepted the idea that happiness is somehow wrong or cannot last, you will not respond appropriately when happiness comes knocking at your door in the form of romantic love. No matter how much you may have waited and cried, you will not welcome love when it arrives-you will find a way to sabotage it. What a challenge to resist this temptation! What an opportunity for true spiritual growth and transformation-to defy your negative feelings and honor the gift that life offers you!

A productive purpose to which you give yourself fully and joyfully is one of the great adventures of life. It is a uniquely human source of happiness.

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.

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.

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.

In a world in which we are exposed to more information, more options, more philosophies, more perspectives than ever before, in which we must choose the values by which we will live (rather than unquestioningly follow some tradition for no better reason than that our own parents did), we need to be willing to stand on our own judgment and trust our own intelligence-to look at the world through our own eyes-to chart our course and think through how to achieve the future we want, to commit ourselves to continuous questioning and learning-to be, in a word, self-responsible.

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

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.

You have a right to your feelings. Your feelings are there to tell you something, but they are not infallible guides to behavior.

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.

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.

Taking on responsibilities that properly belong to someone else means behaving irresponsibly toward yourself. You need to know where you end and someone else begins. You need to understand boundaries. You need to know what is and is not up to you, what is and is not in your control, what is and is not your responsibility.

If you feel inadequate to face challenges, unworthy of love or respect, untitled to happiness, and fear assertive thought, wants, or needs- if you lack basic self trust, self-respect, and self-confidence- your self-esteem deficiency will limit you, no matter what other assets you possess.

Feel deeply to think clearly.

It is impressive to see a person who has been battered by life in many ways, who is torn by a variety of unsolved problems, who may be alienated from many aspects of the self-but who is still fighting, still struggling, still striving to find the path to a fulfilling existence, moved by the wisdom of knowing, "I am more than my problems."

When you are frightened, you typically pull energy in to your center, seeing less, hearing less-shrinking consciousness precisely when you need to expand it.

One of the most significant characteristics of healthy self esteem is that it is the state of one who is not at war either with himself or with others.

There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity.

You are not likely to bring out the best in people or nurture their creativity if every time you hear about their problems you instantly offer a solution Encourage people to look for their own solutions-and project the knowledge that they are capable of doing so.

Suppose you feel you cannot accept some fact about yourself. Then own your refusal to accept. Own the block. Embrace it fully. And watch it begin to disappear. The principal is this: Begin where you are-accept that. Then change and growth become possible.

Whether your focus is on preserving and strengthening family ties in a world of increasingly unstable relationships, gaining access to a decent job, growing and evolving as a person, or guiding a company through the stormy seas of a fiercely competitive global marketplace-whether your goals are material, emotional, or spiritual-the price of success is the same: thinking, learning. To be asleep at the wheel-to rely only on the known, familiar, and automatized-is to invite disaster.

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.

In the nature of our existence, we must act to achieve values. And in order to act appropriately, we need to value the beneficiary of our actions. In order to seek values, we must consider ourselves worthy of enjoying them. In order to fight for our happiness, we must consider ourselves worthy of happiness.

It is very difficult to accept in others emotions you cannot accept in yourself.

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.

If you face life without confidence in your own powers, you succumb too easily to setbacks and adversity; you lack the will to persevere.

It is a curious paradox of human history that a doctrine that tells human beings to regard themselves as sacrificial animals has been accepted as a doctrine representing benevolence and love for mankind.

It is a mistake to look at someone who is self assertive and say, "It's easy for her, she has good self-esteem." One of the ways you build self-esteem is by being self-assertive when it is not easy to do so. There are always times when self-assertiven ess requires courage, no matter how high your self-esteem.

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.

... 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!'

As you grow in self-esteem, your face, manner, way of talking and moving will tend naturally to project the pleasure you take in being alive.

To trust one's mind and to know that one is worthy of happiness is the essence of self-esteem.

No one is coming to save you.

Self esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.

To accept struggle as part of life, to accept all of it, even the darkest moments of anguish; to be motivated by love rather than fear, by confidence rather than insecurity: these are the benchmarks of high self-esteem. The wish to avoid fear and pain is not the motive that drives the lives of highly evolved men and women; rather, it is the life force within them, thrusting toward its unique form of expression-the actualization of personal values.