Ingmar Bergman - Sigmund Freud - Star Trek: The Next Generation TV - Martin Luther King - J D Salinger - Friedrich Nietzsche - Adam Curtis - Douglas Adams - Joseph Conrad - Neil deGrasse Tyson - Alanis Morisette - Bobby Fischer - James Joyce - Michael Moore - Tennessee Williams - G K Chesterton - Jean Piaget - Alan Watts - Nayef Al-Rodhan - Woody Allen & Sleeper 1973 - Spitting Image TV - Ron Dennis - Morgan Freeman TV -
Today the individual has become the highest form, and the greatest bane, of artistic creation. The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other’s eyes and yet deny each other’s existence. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal. Ingmar Bergman
Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them. Sigmund Freud
You do have an ego, don’t you? Star Trek: The Next Generation s2e17: Samaritan Snare, Doctor to Picard
Now the consequences, the disruptive effects of such self-centredness, such egocentric desires, are tragic. And we see these every day. At first, it leads to frustration and disillusionment and unhappiness at many points. For usually when people are self-centred, they are self-centred because they are seeking attention, they want to be admired and this is the way they set out to do it. But in the process, because of their self-centredness, they are not admired; they are mawkish and people don’t want to be bothered with them. And so the very thing they seek, they never get. And they end up frustrated and unhappy and disillusioned. Martin Luther King
All human beings have a desire to belong and to feel significant and important. And the way to solve this problem is not to drown out the ego but to find your sense of importance in something outside of the self. And you are then able to live because you have given your life to something outside and something that is meaningful, objectified. You rise above this self-absorption to something outside. This is the way to go through life with a balance, with the proper perspective because you’ve given yourself to something greater than self. Sometimes it’s friends, sometimes it’s family, sometimes it’s a great cause, it’s a great loyalty, but give yourself to that something and life becomes meaningful. Martin Luther King
I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting. J D Salinger, Franny and Zooey
Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul. Friedrich Nietzsche
Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ‘Ego’. Friedrich Nietzsche
Anna Freud believed that if children like the Burlinghams strictly followed the rules of accepted social conduct, then as they grew up the conscious part of their mind, what was called the Ego, would be greatly strengthened in its struggle to control the Conscious. But if children did not conform, their Ego would be weak and they would be prey to the forces of the Unconscious. Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self, BBC 2002
If there’s anything bigger than my Ego around, I want it caught and shot now. Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Egoism, which is the moving force of the world, and altruism, which is its morality, these two contradictory instincts, of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism. Joseph Conrad, cited Zdzislaw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Life
If your ego starts out, ‘I am important, I am big, I am special,’ you’re in for some disappointments when you look around at what we’ve discovered about the universe. No, you’re not big. No, you’re not. You’re small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that’s limited on Earth. Neil deGrasse Tyson
The ego is a fascinating monster. Alanis Morissette
I like the moment when I break a man’s ego. Bobby Fischer
Nations have their ego, just like individuals. James Joyce
Clearly I am a person who suffers from a lack of ego. Michael Moore
Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ... each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition – all such distortions within our own egos – condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That’s how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts. Tennessee Williams
I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. G K Chesterton
Egocentrism in so far as it means confusion of the ego and the external world, and egocentrism in so far as it means lack of cooperation, constitute one and the same phenomenon. So long as the child does not dissociate his ego from the suggestions coming from the physical and from the social world, he cannot cooperate, for in order to cooperate one must be conscious of one's ego and situate it in relation to thought in general. And in order to become conscious of one’s ego, it is necessary to liberate oneself from the thought and will of others. The coercion exercised by the adult or the older child is therefore inseparable from the unconscious egocentrism of the very young child. Jean Piaget, The Moral Judgment of the Child ch2, 1932
The prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East – in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man’s natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction.
We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe. Alan Watts, in The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are 1966
Human nature is governed by general self-interest and affected by genetic predisposition, which implies that there are likely to be limits to our moral sensitivities. Nayef al-Rodhan, Emotional Amoral Egoism, 2008
This is a photograph of Norman Mailer. A very great writer – he er donated his ego to the Harvard Medical School to study. Sleeper 1973 starring Woody Allen & Diane Keaton & John Beck & Marya Small & Susan Miller & Mary Gregory & Don Keefer & Peter Hobbs & John McLiam & Bartlett Robinson & Chris Forbes & Brian Avery et al, director Woody Allen
Later in the programme they’ll be more of Richard Branson’s ego trip than you and I can bear. Spitting Image s4e4, TV presenter, ITV 1987
Prost v Senna: What a wonderful problem to have … Ego and ambition are very very close bedfellows, and very often people will misunderstand the intenseness that you bring to your ambition … It’s a fine line. Ron Dennis, interview, The Race to Perfection V: Controversial Moments, Sky Documentaries 2020
The subconscious is the source of our primal fears and desires. The well-spring of our dreams. The place where our alter-egos lurk. Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman: Mysteries of the Subconscious, Science 2010
10% of autistics are savants. ibid.
Science has proven that we really do have two minds. ibid.