ego

In 1950, the [Gallup organization] asked high school kids, are you a very important person? Then 12 percent said yes. Asked again in 2005, 80 percent said, yes, I'm a very important person.

May be I am villain in your story, but I am hero in mine.

When a leader keeps personal ego in check it builds the confidence and self-esteem of others.

The actual confident man, the man truly sure of himself, is not he who esteems himself higher than others, but he who is sure enough that he can bear to esteem others higher than himself.

Often in the morning he drove a long hour or more to the markets in the city, there to behold what would determine the day__ special. With the crates of fresh selections snuggled into his station wagon, his thoughts on the ride back confronted the culinary equivalent of the writer__ blank page. Sometimes his head swirled with exciting ideas; other mornings he was in a panic upon returning with the same old eggplant and squash and zucchini and nothing but the dullness of the word ratatouille standing by to mock him.

Often in the morning he drove a long hour or more to the markets in the city, there to behold what would determine the day__ special. With the crates of fresh selesctions snuggled into his station wagon, his thoughts on the ride back confronted the culinary equivalent of the writer__ blank page. Sometimes his head swirled with exciting ideas; other mornings he was in a panic upon returning with the same old eggplant and squash and zucchini and nothing but the dullness of the word ratatouille standing by to mock him.

In conscious life, we achieve some sense of ourselves as reasonably unified, coherent selves, and without this action would be impossible. But all this is merely at the __maginary_ level of the ego, which is no more than the tip of the iceberg of the human subject known to psychoanalysis. The ego is function or effect of a subject which is always dispersed, never identical with itself, strung out along the chains of the discourses which constitute it. There is a radical split between these two levels of being _ a gap most dramatically exemplified by the act of referring to myself in a sentence. When I say __omorrow I will mow the lawn,_ the ___ which I pronounce is an immediately intelligible, fairly stable point of reference which belies the murky depths of the ___ which does the pronouncing. The former ___ is known to linguistic theory as the __ubject of the enunciation_, the topic designated by my sentence; the latter ___, the one who speaks the sentence, is the __ubject of the enunciating_, the subject of the actual act of speaking. In the process of speaking and writing, these two _____ seem to achieve a rough sort of unity; but this unity is of an imaginary kind. The __ubject of the enunciating_, the actual speaking, writing human person, can never represent himself or herself fully in what is said: there is no sign which will, so to speak, sum up my entire being. I can only designate myself in language by a convenient pronoun. The pronoun ___ stands in for the ever-elusive subject, which will always slip through the nets of any particular piece of language; and this is equivalent to saying that I cannot __ean_ and __e_ simultaneously. To make this point, Lacan boldly rewrites Descartes__ __ think, therefore I am_ as: __ am not where I think, and I think where I am not.

It is through the filter of our ego that we give meaning to everything we see, touch, hear, taste and feel.

No man voluntarily expresses his opinion without some intent to make a difference, and even if he does, he shouldn't.

My Ego taught me a new pride, I teach it to men: No longer to bury the head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head which creates meaning for the earth!

If the ego is not regularly and repeatedly dissolved in the unbounded hyperspace of the Transcendent Other, there will always be slow drift away from the sense of self as part of nature__ larger whole. The ultimate consequence of this drift is the fatal ennui that now permeates Western Civilization.

Ego, Identity and Self - the 3 concepts of one's creation that defines them entirely. Have an Ego, for without one, there is nothing but self-doubt. Have an Identity, for without one, there is nothing but an empty shell. Understand your 'Self,' for if you don't, then who or what are you?

Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life__ secrets. It__ the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. __e are too ego-centered,_ Suzuki tells Cage._ The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.

The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it__ just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into existence. Enlightenment isn__ in the character, it__ in the underlying truth.

I? This is the very root of all evil.

It__ ego _ the false self _ that exalts the guru and declares the teaching sacred, but nothing is exalted or sacred, only true or not true.

Between you and you, let there be no secrets. ~T.F. Hodge

Pride can be friend, ego can be foe...depending on which one we choose, or not, to conquer.