Quotes about Ego

Did you ever notice how difficult it is to argue with someone who is not obsessed with being right?

Once ego and pride are on the line, you can't change your mind without looking bad. The desire to save face trumps the desire to make the right call.

How many crimes are committed simply because their authors could not endure being wrong.

The need to be right -- the sign of a vulgar mind.

The condition of being forgiven is self-abandonment. The proud man prefers self-reproach, however painful --because the reproached self isn't abandoned; it remains intact.

The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo — even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.

Knowing without loving is frankly dangerous for the soul and for society. You'll critique most everything you encounter and even have the hubris to call this mode of reflexive cynicism thinking (whereas it's really your ego's narcissistic reaction to the moment). You'll position things to quickly as inferior or superior, with me or against me, and most of the time you'll be wrong.

Much of what is called Christianity has more to do with disguising the ego behind the screen of religion and culture than any real movement toward a God beyond the small self, and a new self in God.

Controlling people try to control people, and they do the same with God—but loving anything always means a certain giving up of control. You tend to create a God who is just like you—whereas it was supposed to be the other way around.

Sacrificial religion was all exposed in Jesus' response to any mechanical or mercenary notion of religion, but we soon went right back to it in many Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant forms, because the old ego will always prefer an economy of merit and sacrifice to any economy of grace and unearned love, where we have no control.

What the ego (the False Self) hates and fears more than anything else is change. It will think up a thousand other things to be concerned about or be moralistic about—anything rather than giving up "who I think I am" and "who I need to be to look good.

Once you see that your skin and your gift are two sides of the same coin, you can never forget it. It preserves religion from any arrogance and denial.