Echoes

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.

Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss whatever insults your own soul.

No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.

What does your conscience say? — You should become who you are.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.

The destiny of man is in his own soul.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

Though the whole world should praise him, he would not be stimulated to greater endeavour, and though the whole world should condemn him, he would not be depressed. So fixed was he in the difference between the internal judgement of himself and the external judgement of others.

Do not go by revelation; Do not go by tradition; Do not go by hearsay; Do not go on the authority of sacred texts; Do not go on the grounds of pure logic; Do not go by a view that seems rational; Do not go by reflecting on mere appearances; Do not go along with a considered view because you agree with it; Do not go along on the grounds that the person is competent; Do not go along because "the recluse is our teacher." Kalamas, when you yourselves know: These things are unwholesome, these things are blameworthy; these things are censured by the wise; and when undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill, abandon them... Kalamas, when you know for yourselves: These are wholesome; these things are not blameworthy; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness, having undertaken them, abide in them.

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Be a lamp unto yourself, be a refuge to yourself. Take yourself to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the Truth as a refuge.

He who cannot find himself the retreat of his own soul, let him appeal to solitude — if he can even bear himself.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.