{"quotes":[{"text":"A positive response to any situation is the key to the feeling of well-being. The more we practice it the easier it becomes. Gradually all automatic reactions are being replaced by a conscious response. When we know we are self-empowered, we take responsibility for our emotions. It is knowing that we have the ability to respond in a way we prefer.","author":"Raphael Zernoff","tags":["consciousness","raphael-zernoff","self-awareness","self-empowerment","self-understanding","spirituality","wisdom"],"id":9615,"author_id":"Raphael+Zernoff"},{"text":"Richard Wright and his Negro intellectual colleagues never realized the plain truth that no one in the United States understood the revolutionary potential of the Negro better than the Negro's white radical allies. They understood it instinctively, and revolutionary theory had little to do with it. What Wright could not see was that what the Negro's allies feared most of all was that this sleeping, dream-walking black giant might wake up and direct the revolution all by himself, relegating his white allies to a humiliating second-class status. The negro's allies were not about to tell the Negro anything that might place him on the path to greater power and independence in the revolutionary movement than they themselves had. The rules of the power game meant that unless the American Negro taught himself the profound implications of his own revolutionary significance in America, it would never be taught to him by anybody else. Unless the Negro intellectuals understood that in pursuit of this self-understanding, they would have to make their own rules, by and for themselves, nationalism would forever remain--as it was for Wright-- 'a bewildering and vexing question.","author":"Harold Cruse","tags":["black-americans","black-intellectuals","class","culture","culture-and-imperialism","independence","independent-thought","intellectuals","marxism","nationalism","race","race-in-america","self-awareness","self-understanding"],"id":20849,"author_id":"Harold+Cruse"},{"text":"To fall down is to face the weakness of my humanity, test the mettle of my character, and push the limits of my strength. Therefore, falling down will tell me who I am far more clearly than most things I might learn when I’m standing up.","author":"Craig D. Lounsbrough","tags":["character","clarity","defeat","failure","fall","falling","humanity","identity","insight","learn","limits","mettle","self-understanding","strength","test","testing","weakness"],"id":25539,"author_id":"Craig+D.+Lounsbrough"},{"text":"If you do not respect your own wishes, no one else will. You will simply attract people who disrespect you as much as you do.","author":"Vironika Tugaleva","tags":["disrespect","relationships","respect","self-compassion","self-knowledge","self-love","self-understanding"],"id":38332,"author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva"},{"text":"To ask who we are represents a primary reflex in human consciousness. Every person seeks to understand him or herself and reach a verifiable and cohesive image of his or her own identity.","author":"Kilroy J. Oldster","tags":["identity","identity","self-awareness","self-awareness","self-understanding"],"id":48154,"author_id":"Kilroy+J.+Oldster"},{"text":"Life is a conversation with yourself. And who are you if not the eternal presence behind everything that is, was, and will be? Like this, the blow of each breeze and the beauty of each sunset can teach you about yourself, if you listen. If you hear.","author":"Vironika Tugaleva","tags":["know-thyself","love-yourself","self-awareness","self-knowledge","self-love","self-understanding"],"id":79369,"author_id":"Vironika+Tugaleva"},{"text":"Today I began to criticise myself and look at myself with a judgmental eye... But then instead of going all out in that direction, I stopped and I began to understand me. And then I began to be patient with me. And then I began to feel a softness in the middle of my chest. So then I concluded that I can understand and be patient with me, just like how I am always understanding and being patient with everyone else. Why? Because I deserve that, and more.","author":"C. JoyBell C.","tags":["inspirational-life","inspirational-living","living-gracefully","love-yourself","patience","self-compassion","self-understanding","self-worth","understanding","wisdom"],"id":82490,"author_id":"C.+JoyBell+C."},{"text":"When we choose to operate on the frequency of compassion and kindness, we create, and reinforce our own reality, as filled with compassion and kindness. I refer here to the idea of unconditional compassion and kindness. It means that we can choose to react to any situation, as negative as it may seem to be, with kindness and understanding. Whenever someone chooses to be rude to us, there is no need for us to respond with rudeness. A moment of self-reflection can remind us that fire fought with fire only increases the heat. The more often we practice our conscious positive response, to any situation, our automatic negative reactions are gradually being replaced with a conscious decision to act in the most loving way we can conceive at the moment.","author":"Raphael Zernoff","tags":["awareness","consciousness","power","re-action","response","self-awareness","self-empowerment","self-understanding"],"id":95920,"author_id":"Raphael+Zernoff"},{"text":"Too often fear is fiction madly running amuck, all the while madly tracking ‘muck’ across the floor of fact.","author":"Craig D. Lounsbrough","tags":["distortion","fact","fear","fearful","fiction","frightened","honest","honesty","lies","mad","madly","muck","self-concept","self-esteem","self-perception","self-understanding","track","truth"],"id":98042,"author_id":"Craig+D.+Lounsbrough"},{"text":"A person imbued with compassion and self-understanding can readily love oneself and exhibit endless sympathy for all people. A person who is unkind to their self can never transcend their corrupt barriers much less run into the world with open arms enthusiastically embracing humankind and all of nature with uninhibited friendliness and goodwill.","author":"Kilroy J. Oldster","tags":["empathy","empathy-for-others","human-rights","love-of-nature","love-of-neighbor","self-acceptance","self-awareness","self-loathing","self-love","self-love","self-respect","self-understanding","sympathy"],"id":107863,"author_id":"Kilroy+J.+Oldster"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":44,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}