It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than others their opinions more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.
- Topic: Conflict, Self-esteem
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Marcus Aurelius
The wise man accepts his pain, endures it, but does not add to it.
How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.
Whatever happens at all happens as it should; you will find this true, if you watch narrowly.
To change your mind and to follow him who sets you straight is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before.
Accept things to which fate binds you, love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
More on These Topics
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.
The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
One of the most pathetic—and dangerous—signs of our times is the growing number of individuals and groups who believe that no one can possibly disagree with them for any honest reason.
Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.
I could not understand how any man could be so brutalized as to claim the right to dispose of the lives of others, nor how any man could be so lacking in self-esteem as to grant to others the right to dispose of his life.
When you say 'yes' to others, make sure you are not saying 'no' to yourself.
Thinking too well of people often allows them to be better than they otherwise would.
I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.
Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own; he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.
