Echoes

Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

The effect of life in society is to complicate and confuse our existence, making us forget who we really are by causing us to become preoccupied with what we are not.

Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

Man is what he believes.

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinions than our own.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!

Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.

Remember that you are a man.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face.

The destiny of man is in his own soul.

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

A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

To find yourself, think for yourself.

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.

Must you value what others value, avoid what others avoid? How ridiculous!

I may become a poor man; I shall then be one among many. I may be exiled; I shall then regard myself as born in the place to which I shall be sent. They may put me in chains. What then? Am I free from bonds now? Behold this clogging burden of a body, to which nature has fettered me! “I shall die,” you say; you mean to say “I shall cease to run the risk of sickness; I shall cease to run the risk of imprisonment; I shall cease to run the risk of death.”