text:
Joan Robinson

Joan Robinson FBA (30 October 1903 – 5 August 1983) was a British post-Keynesian economist who made many contributions to economic theory.

Quotes

 * Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true.
 * Amartya Sen's article in 'The Economist' dated November 18th, 2005

Economic Philosophy (1962)

 * Page numbers are from the 2006 Aldine printing.

 * It is the business of economists, not to tell us what to do, but show why what we are doing anyway is in accord with proper principles.
 * p. 21

 * The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.
 * p. 45

 * Progress is slow partly from mere intellectual inertia. In a subject where there is no agreed procedure for knocking out errors, doctrines have a long life. A professor teaches what he was taught, and his pupils, with a proper respect and reverence for teachers, set up a resistance against his critics for no other reason than that it was he whose pupils they were.
 * p. 79

An Essay on Marxian Economics (Second Edition) (1966)

 *  I began to read Capital, just as one reads any book, to see what was in it; I found a great deal that neither its followers nor its opponents had prepared me to expect.
 * Preface To The Second Edition, p. vi

 * Until recently, Marx used to be treated in academic circles with contemptuous silence, broken only by an occasional mocking footnote. But modern developments in academic theory, forced by modern developments in economic life — the analysis of monopoly and the analysis of unemployment — have shattered the structure of orthodox doctrine and destroyed the complacency with which economists were wont to view the working of laissez-faire capitalism. Their attitude to Marx, as the leading critic of capitalism, is therefore much less cocksure than it used to be. In my belief, they have much to learn from him.
 * Foreword, p. xxii

 * The fundamental differences between Marxian and traditional orthodox economics are, first, that the orthodox economists accept the capitalist system as part of the eternal order of Nature, while Marx regards it as a passing phase in the transition from the feudal economy of the past to the socialist economy of the future.
 * Chapter I, Introduction, p. 1

 * In general, the nightmare quality of Marx's thought gives it, in this bedevilled age, an air of greater reality than the gentle complacency of the orthodox academics. Yet he, at the same time, is more encouraging than they, for he releases hope as well as terror from Pandora's box, while they preach only the gloomy doctrine that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
 * Chapter I, Introduction, p. 4-5

 * Voltaire remarked that it is possible to kill a flock of sheep by witchcraft if you give them plenty of arsenic at the same time. The sheep, in this figure, may well stand for the complacent apologists of capitalism; Marx's penetrating insight and bitter hatred of oppression supply the arsenic, while the labour theory of value provides the incantations.
 * Chapter III, The Labour Theory Of Value, p. 22

 * If there is any law governing the distribution of income between classes, it still remains to be discovered.
 * Chapter IV, The Long-Period Theory Of Employment, p. 34

 * If knowledge develops as capital accumulates, there need be no tendency to diminishing returns, and with constant returns there can be no tendency for the rate of profit to fall (always assuming that the problem of effective demand as ruled out).
 * Chapter V, The Falling Rate Of Profit, p. 38

 * Modern technique, as Marx pointed out, fosters the concentration of capital, and the levels of profits is supported by a scarcity of enterprise which is not due to the real cost of risk-bearing, but to the scarcity of individuals who have anything to risk.
 * Chapter VII, The Orthodox Theory of Profit, p. 57-58

 * It is the rate of investment which governs the rate of saving, and not vice versa.
 * Chapter VIII, The General Theory of Employment, p. 66

 * If a rise in wages does not raise prices, a fall will not reduce them.
 * Chapter X, Real And Money Wages, p. 89

 * Marx, however imperfectly he worked out the details, set himself the task of discovering the law of motion of capitalism, and if there is any hope of progress in economics at all, it must be in using academic methods to solve the problems posed by Marx.
 * Chapter XI, Dynamic Analysis, p. 95

Economic Heresies (1971)

 * The orthodox doctrines of economics which were dominant in the last quarter of the nineteenth century had a clear message. They supported laisser faire, free trade, the gold standard, and the universally advantageous effects of the pursuit of profit by competitive private enterprise.
 * Introduction, p. vii

 * In all the talk in the Principles (as opposed to the formal analysis) it is not the saving of rentiers but the energy of entrepreneurs which governs accumulation.
 * Chapter I, Stationary States, p. 14

 * A depression is a situation of self-fulfilling pessimism.
 * Chapter II, The Short Period, p. 23

 * Reality is never a golden age.
 * Chapter III, Interest and Profit, p. 47

 * Rosa Luxemburg maintained that the capitalist system can keep up its rate of investment (and therefore its profits) only so long as it is expanding geographically.
 * Chapter III, Interest and Profits, p. 50 (confer Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Buch II, Chapter XX, p. 474)

 * But once we bring historical time into the argument, it is not so easy to present the free play of the market as an ideal mechanism for maximizing welfare and securing social justice.
 * Chapter IV, Increasing and Diminishing Returns, p. 63

 * When a large part of the market for British textiles was in the colonies, a fall in the price of tea and cocoa caused unemployment in Lancashire.
 * Chapter V, Nonmonetary Models, p. 67

 *  There is an unearthly, mystical element in Friedman's thought. The mere existence of a stock of money somehow promotes expenditure. But insofar as he offers an intelligible theory, it is made up of elements borrowed from Keynes.
 * Chapter VI, Prices and Money, p. 87

 * Time, so to say, runs at right angles to the page at each point on the curve.
 * Chapter VII, The Theory of the Firm, p. 104

 * The nature of technology depends very much upon what the public can be induced to put up with.
 * Chapter VIII, Growth Models, p. 140

 * Even if the crises that are looming up are overcome and a new run of prosperity lies ahead, deeper problems will still remain. Modern capitalism has no purpose except to keep the show going.
 * Conclusion, p. 143

Contributions to Modern Economics (1978)

 * When I came up to Cambridge (in October 1921) to read economics, I did not have much idea of what it was about.
 * Reminiscences, p. ix

 * There is no such thing as a normal period of history. Normality is a fiction of economic textbooks.
 * Chapter 1, The Second Crisis of Economic Theory, p. 3

 * It is a popular error that bureaucracy is less flexible than private enterprise. It may be so in detail, but when large scale adaptations have to be made, central control is far more flexible. It may take two months to get an answer to a letter from a government department, but it takes twenty years for an industry under private enterprise to readjust itself to a fall in demand.
 * Chapter 3, Obstacles to Full Employment, p. 27 (See also: General Motors)

 * It is impossible to add the stock of money to the flow of saving.
 * Chapter 4, The Concept of Hoarding, p. 32

 * But, as soon as speculators become an important influence in the market, their business is to speculate on each others behaviour.
 * Chapter 5, The Rate of Interest, p. 46

 * Michal Kalecki's claim to priority of publication is indisputable.
 * Chapter 6, Kalecki And Keynes, p. 55

 * The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
 * Chapter 7, Marx, Marshall and Keynes, p. 75

 * 'Capital' is not what capital is called, it is what its name is called.
 * Chapter 8, Production Function and Theory of Capital, p. 79

 * It is high time to abandon the mainstream and take to the turbulent waters of truly dynamic analysis.
 * Chapter 11, The Meaning of Capital, p. 125

 * But the tygers of wrath go the other way. Do not ask me why. It is just a fact I noticed when I was looking through field glasses from a machan.
 * Chapter 13, Lecture at Oxford by a Cambridge Economist, p. 143 (spelling as per text...)

 * Why did the hunters in the Wealth of Nations exchange beavers for deer?
 * Chapter 14, The Philosophy of Prices, p. 146

 * It is much easier to organize control over one industry serving many markets than over one market served by the products of several industries.
 * Chapter 15, 'Imperfect Competition' Revisited, p. 167

 * Income from property is not the reward of waiting, it is the reward of employing a good stockbroker.
 * Chapter 16, The Theory of Value Reconsidered, p. 188

 * At any moment there is certainly not balanced trade between the various areas of the habitable globe that happens to be under separate national governments — there is an ever-changing pattern of deficits and surpluses.
 * Chapter 19, The Need For A Reconsideration, p. 218

 * It seems that neither the Keynesian nor the Marxian prognosis of the future of capitalism is being fulfilled and we are left without any particular theory as to what will happen next.
 * Chapter 20, Has Capitalism Changed?, p. 227

 * To supply goods is a source of profit, but to supply services is a ' burden upon industry '. It is for this reason that when, as a nation, ' we have never had it so good ' we find that we ' cannot afford ' just what we most need.
 * Chapter 21, Latter-Day Capitalism, p. 239

 * An agent must have some discretion.
 * Chapter 22, Socialist Affluence., p. 246

 * The bastard Keynesian doctrine, evolved in the United States, invaded the economic faculties of the world, floating on the wings of the almighty dollar.
 * Chapter 23, What Has Become of Employment Policy?, p. 256

 * " the merchant had observed that the marginal utility of daughters decreases with surprising rapidity."
 * Chapter 24, Beauty and the Beast, p. 268

Quotes about Joan Robinson

 * I must mention my special intellectual debt to Joan Robinson, with whom I had the opportunity to discuss over a period of nearly twenty years some of the problems analysed here. She, more than anybody else, convinced me of the radical content of Keynesian economics which we could decipher more easily with the help of Marx and Kalecki.
 * Amit Bhaduri, Macro-Economics - The Dynamics of Commodity Production, Preface, p. xii

 * I claim that this dinner, too much to eat and drink, was the basic reason why, for the only time in my life, I slept with Joan Robinson. Let me tell you the story. Ken Arrow was to read his famous paper - we know now that it was famous - on uncertainty and the economics of medical care, and I was one of the guests asked to come to the Arts Theatre Restaurant. It was a cold winter's night, we ate and drank a lot, and then we went into this room with a great big fire and a huge couch. Joan sat here, and I sat there, and Ken was sitting as close to me as you are now, and both Joan and I went to sleep while he read his paper.
 * Geoffrey Harcourt, quoted in Conversations with Post Keynesians (1995) by J. E. King

 * She was taken in a sealed train from coast to coast—from Paul Baran to Paul Sweezy.
 * Paul Samuelson, quoted in Michael Szenberg, Lall Ramrattan and Aron Gottesman, "Ten Ways to Know Paul A. Samuelson" (2006)

 * I remember also when I was a student in Cambridge, one of my teachers, Joan Robinson, a great economist, explained to me why China is so admirable, as she was making a cultural comparison of the kind which has become very common now ever since Sam Huntington wrote his book about civilisation and trying to reduce every civilisation into something like a one or two sentence summary. Joan told me that the real trouble with Indians, she told me, is that Indians are just too rude; and she said the Japanese, the trouble really is that the Japanese are too polite; and then she said the Chinese are just right. So I think those are good inspiration to go and study the Chinese experience. Now, in so far as private income is only one of the influences on the achievements in reducing poverty, the first thing I want to mention is that even though in the poverty discussion most of the concentration tends to be these days on what happened since economic reform. The fact is that there is a very major lesson in what happened in China previous to that. I am not commenting on the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, I am not talking about the Chinese famine (from) ’59 to ’61 in which 29.6 million people died. There were all kinds of mistakes. But the fact is that China was still the global leader as a poor country expanding basic education at a level which was very hard to imagine, as well as basic health care. All kinds of things came like “barefoot doctors” and so on. But the spread of health care across the country was quite remarkable. By 1979, when the economic reform came, the Chinese life expectancy was already 68 years; the Indian life expectancy was 54 years, 14 years behind it. There are really major lessons there, and I might say also one of the unsung contributions of the pre-reform educational and health care expansion is, I believe, the radical economic expansion that took place in the 1980s. After the economic reform, it would have been very hard without the base of elementary education which China had and India did not at that time, which is still a factor which bothers India badly.
 * Amartya Sen, "What China Could Teach India, Then and Now" (February 17, 2005)

 * Instead, I would concede her a point of uncertain importance. There isn't really a great deal to economics, considered as a logical structure based upon a few indisputable axioms about the world. … A logician is a wondrous creature, but he cannot distinguish between the two simple errors: if A = B, and B = C, then (1) A = 1.01C, and (2) A = 10⁶⁵C. An economist can.
 * George J. Stigler, Review of Economic Philosophy by Joan Robinson

 * That combination, Hayek, Myrdal and Robinson, might have cast the contributions of each into sharper relief: three pioneers who, after important early contributions, gave up economics for political activism.
 * David Warsh, "Ruizismus among the Austrians" (4 December 2011)

title: Joan Robinson


text:
Goats (webcomic)

Goats is a webcomic written and illustrated by Jonathan Rosenberg.

Philip

 * Only God can make a tree but only technology can simulate a dog peeing on one.
 * Goats archive

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Goats (webcomic)


text:
Cardinal Richelieu

Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac (9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642) was a French clergyman, noble, and statesman. Consecrated as a bishop in 1607, he was appointed Foreign Secretary in 1616. He continued to rise in both the Catholic Church and French government, becoming a cardinal in 1622, and Chief minister to Louis XIII of France in 1624. He retained this office until his death in 1642, when he was succeeded by Cardinal Mazarin, whose career he had fostered.

Richelieu sought to consolidate royal power and by restraining the power of the nobility, he transformed France into a strong, centralized state. In foreign policy, his primary objective was to check the power of the Habsburg dynasty in Spain and Austria, and ensure French dominance in the Thirty Years' War that engulfed Europe. Despite suppressing French Protestants, he made alliances with Protestant states like the Kingdom of England and the Dutch Republic to achieve his goals. Though he was a powerful political figure, events such as the Day of the Dupes, or Journée des Dupes, show this power was still dependent on the king's confidence.

Quotes

 * Savoir dissimuler est le savoir des rois.
 * Deception is the knowledge of kings.
 * “Maxims,” Testament Politique (1641)

 * Secrecy is the first essential in affairs of state.
 * “Maxims,” Testament Politique (1641)

 * Pour tromper un rival l'artifice est permis; on peut tout employer contres ses ennemis.
 * We may employ artifice to deceive a rival, anything against our enemies.
 * As quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood
 * Variant translation: To mislead a rival, deception is permissible; one may use all means against his enemies.

 * Ultima ratio Regum
 * The last reasoning of Kings.
 * A comment upon artillery fire, as quoted in Dictionary of Foreign Phrases and Classical Quotations (1908) edited by Hugh Percy Jones, p. 119; these words were later inscribed upon the cannon of Louis XVI of France.

 * Had Luther and Calvin been confined before they had begun to dogmatize, the states would have been spared many troubles.
 * As quoted in The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), edited by Charles George Herbermann

 * Harshness towards individuals who flout the laws and commands of state is for the public good; no greater crime against the public interest is possible than to show leniency to those who violate it.
 * As quoted in Champlain's Dream (2008) by David Hackett Fischer

Disputed

 * Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
 * If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
 * As quoted in The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1896) by Jehiel K̀eeler Hoyt, p. 763
 * Édouard Fournier, in L'Espirit dans l'Historie (1867), 3rd edition, Ch. 51, p. 260, disputes the traditional attribution, and suggests various agents of Richelieu might have been the actual author.
 * David Hackett Fischer, in Champlain's Dream (2009), Simon & Schuster, p. 704, n. 14, says it's a paraphrase of Quintilian and there is no source closer to Richelieu than Francoise Bertaut's Memoires pour servir à l'histoire d'Anne d'Autriche.

 * Variant translations:
 * Give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough in them to hang him.
 * Attributed in Dictionary of Foreign Phrases and Classical Quotations (1908) edited by Hugh Percy Jones, p. 327
 * If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.
 * As quoted in America Debates Privacy Versus Security (2007) by Jeri Freedman
 * Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something there to hang him.
 * As quoted in Champlain's Dream (2008), Simon & Schuster, p. 391, by David Hackett Fischer, footnoted with disputation above.

 * The people can be easily misled, but a wise autocrat can guide them towards their own good
 * It is sometimes attributed to Cardinal Richelieu, though he probably never said it.

Quotes about Richelieu

 * He was a great statesman, not so much by reason of his calculations and his designs as by his exact appreciation of the means necessary for arriving at a certain end, and of the relation between a state’s internal policy and administration, and its foreign policy. This is the secret of his success in an enterprise in which France was running counter to a power stronger than herself.
 * Jacques Bainville, History of France (1926), p. 165

 * Supported by the king, Richelieu had exercised a veritable dictatorship which the French people had submitted to with impatience, but without which the national work would have been impossible. The nobles were not the only ones who protested. More than once the peasants rose up because of the taxes, the bourgeois because the interest was not paid. The greatness of the result to be attained—France entrenched on the Rhine, the conquest of the "natural frontiers," the end of the German danger, the humbling of the Hapsburgs—were ideas fitted to exalt the minds of those shaping French policy. But how could the masses be expected to renounce their comforts cheerfully for such far-off ends which were beyond their powers of comprehension? Later the policy of Richelieu became a tradition, a national dogma, respected even by the revolutionists. But during his lifetime his contemporaries were far from feeling that no sacrifice was too great if it meant the defeat of the house of Austria. In truth the death of the great Cardinal was felt rather as a relief.
 * Jacques Bainville, History of France (1926), p. 166

 * His most recurring insistence is upon the supremacy of reason and prudence over the hazards of emotion and favoritism in the governance of affairs of state. His strongest injunction is a constant surveillance of every potential serious source of danger to the state and equally steadfast purpose in promoting every measure for strengthening the realm. The king must appoint men of high competence, integrity, and fidelity to government service; be on guard against flatterers; be patient with mediocrities and know how best to employ them; maintain a strong and adequate army; and never act without the advice of the royal council. Many other counsels are given which reveal the flexibility of Richelieu's mind, his circumspect caution, and a determination that brooked no obstacle in carrying through a plan. There are too many exhortations to abide by the Christian conscience, which seem to consort uncomfortably with Richelieu's overriding purpose—to make France an absolute monarchy and the dominant state of Europe.
 * Joseph F. Costanzo, 'Reviewed Work: The Political Testament of Cardinal Richelieu: The Significant Chapters and Supporting Selections by Henry Bertram Hill', The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 341, Unconventional Warfare (May 1962), pp. 131-132

 * Combining in himself the functions of a number of former officials, he had accepted the position in order to centralize the control of the sea and of commerce in his own hands. After he had accomplished this purpose he proceeded to use the office to develop the economic interests of the state. He appointed, for example, a number of men to investigate and make reports concerning various commercial problems. He also made vigorous attempts to establish a powerful naval and commercial marine. Meanwhile he encouraged the founding of a great French colonial empire. By his external policies alone, he sketched the broad outlines of the mercantilist policy which his successor Colbert evolved in more complete detail.
 * Franklin Charles Palm, 'Mercantilism as a Factor in Richelieu's Policy of National Interests', Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 4 (December 1924), p. 658

title: Cardinal Richelieu


text:
Self

In philosophy, the self is the idea of a unified being which is the source of an idiosyncratic consciousness.

B

 * There is good evidence for a sensorimotor self, an emotional and motivational self probably represented in the right hemisphere, a social self-system, and perhaps an appetitive self. All these self-systems ordinarily work in reasonable coordination with each other, though they can be in conflict at times.
 * Bernard J. Baars, "Understanding Subjectivity: Global Workspace Theory and the Resurrection of the Observing Self" Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3, No. 3, 1996, pp. 211-16

 * One way to think of 'self' is as a framework that remains largely stable across many different life situations. The evidence for 'self as stable context' comes from many sources, but especially from the effects of deep disruptions of life goals. Contextual frameworks are after all largely unconscious intentions and expectations that have been stable so long that they have faded into the background of our lives. We take them for granted, just as we take our health and limbs for granted. It is only when those assumptive entitlements are lost, even for a moment, that the structure of the self seems to come into question. Losing a loved friend may be experienced as a great gap in oneself. ...It helps to take this common tragedy seriously as a basic statement about the self in human psychology.
 * Bernard J. Baars, "Understanding Subjectivity: Global Workspace Theory and the Resurrection of the Observing Self" Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3, No. 3, 1996, pp. 211-16

 * Oddly enough, in the sensorimotor area on top of the cortex there are four maps of a little upside-down person, distorted in shape, with every bit of skin and muscle represented in detail. This upside-down map is called the sensorimotor homunculus, the little human. The nervous system abounds in such maps, some of which appear to serve as 'self systems', organizing and integrating vast amounts of local bits of information.
 * Bernard J. Baars, ibid., "Understanding Subjectivity: Global Workspace Theory..."

 * The Arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man’s self.
 * Francis Bacon. ‘On Love’, Essays (1597-1625)

 * The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one’s own mind.
 * Francis Herbert Bradley (1846–1924), British philosopher. Aphorisms, No. 8 (1930)

 * Identities are not tangible anymore. If you look for an identity you find inequality. The self has been refracting.
 * Giannina Braschi, in the Postcolonial novel United States of Banana (2011).

D

 * For in every action what is primarily intended by the doer, whether he acts from natural necessity or out of free will, it is the disclosure of his own image. Hence it comes about that every doer, in so far as he does, takes delight in doing; since everything that is desires its own being, and since in action the being of the doer is somehow intensified, delight necessarily follows... Thus, nothing acts unless [by acting] it makes patent its latent self.
 * Dante Alighieri,  (1312-1313) Libri iii, Caput XIII, (XV.) Translation as quoted by Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958) p. 175.

 * Cogito, ergo sum.
 * I think, therefore I am.
 * Descartes Discours de la Méthode, Discourse on the Method (1637)

 * Identity is an illusion, a temporary state. Everyone is searching for it, but it’s only a brief reflection in a very shallow pool of time.
 * Olivia Dresher (b. 1945), American poet and publisher. ‘Aphorisms by Olivia Dresher’ on, Olivia Dresher.com

 * And when you think of others, far away, think of yourself And say: I am a candle in the darkness.
 * Mahmoud Darwish, Think upon others edinburgharabicinitiative.wordpress.com, aldiwan.net (Arabic)

 * Human beings are so constituted that we take for granted the fact that a direct awareness of our past selves is preserved... We take for granted the durability of the individual self. ...But ...the preservation of memories ...is as great an exercise in magic as the transfer of memories from the dead to the living. ...How the magic works ...is still a dark mystery. ...When once the technology exists to read and write memories from one mind to another, the age of mental exploration will begin in earnest. ...[W]e will look at nature directly through the eyes of the elephant, the eagle and the whale. We will... feel in our own minds the pride of the peacock and the wrath of the lion. That magic is no greater than the magic that enables me to see the rocking horse through the eyes of the child who rode it sixty years ago.
 * Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions: Gifford Lectures given at Aberdeen, Scotland April-November 1985 (1988) Ch. 17 Butterflies Again, pp. 289-291 (paperback edn, 1989).

F

 * Everybody should fear only one person, and that person should be himself.
 * Philip José Farmer, The Magic Labyrinth (1980), Chapter 1

 * If there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better be me.
 * Jerry Fodor, "The Trouble with Psychological Darwinism" London Review of Books, Vol. 20 No. 2, 22 January 1998, pp.11-13

G

 * Self-correction begins with self-knowledge.
 * Baltasar Gracián. In maxim 69, The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

H

 * The self really is an illusion—and realizing this is the basis of spiritual life.
 * Sam Harris, Interview with The Minimalists (19 August 2014)

 * The best mirror is an old friend.
 * George Herbert Jacula Prudentum (1651) (17th Century English proverb)
 * It appears to be an inborn and imperative need of all men to regard the self as a unit. However often and however grievously this illusion is shattered, it always mends again. The judge who sits over the murderer and looks into his face, and at one moment recognizes all the emotions and potentialities and possibilities of the murderer in his own soul and hears the murderer’s voice as his own, is at the next moment one and indivisible as the judge, and scuttles back into the shell of his cultivated self and does his duty and condemns the murderer to death. And if ever the suspicion of their manifold being dawns upon men of unusual powers and of unusually delicate perceptions, so that, as all genius must, they break through the illusion of the unity of the personality and perceive that the self is made up of a bundle of selves, they have only to say so and at once the majority puts them under lock and key, calls science to aid, establishes schizomania and protects humanity from the necessity of hearing the cry of truth from the lips of these unfortunate persons.
 * Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf, B. Creighton, trans., (New York: 1990), pp. 58-59

 * If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now — when?
 * Hillel, from Leo Rosten's Treasury of Jewish Quotations (1972,) p. 459

 * How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization!
 * Eric Hoffer, "Thoughts of Eric Hoffer, Including: 'Absolute Faith Corrupts Absolutely'"; in The New York Times Magazine (April 25, 1971), p. 60

J

 * In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.
 * William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890)

 * Your identity changes with how you perceive reality.
 * Vithu Jeyaloganathan, as quoted in SACRED SPACE: Your Identity (July 11, 2009), The Times of India, SACRED SPACE: Who are you? (September 21, 2011).
 * Variant: “The identity of one changes with how one perceives reality.” As quoted in Between Dog and Wolf: Understanding the Connection and the Confusion (2012) by Jessica Addams and Andrew Miller, Dogwise Publishing.

 * Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
 * Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963)

K

 * “A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation.”
 * Soren Kierkegaard. (1813-1855) "Sickness Unto Death".

 * Rose: Does something like a "self" exist inside of you?
 * Colonel: That which you call "self" serves as nothing more than a mask to cover your own being.
 * Rose: In this era of ready-made 'truths', "self" is just something used to preserve those positive emotions that you occasionally feel...
 * Colonel: Another possibility is that "self" is a concept you conveniently borrowed under the logic that it would endow you with some sense of strength...
 * Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty written by Hideo Kojima and Tomokazu Fukushima

L

 * Self: that invisible chain that snaps tight whenever we stray.
 * Yahia Lababidi (b. 1973), Egyptian-Lebanese essayist and poet. Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)

 * Knowing others is wisdom. Knowing oneself is enlightenment.
 * Laozi, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 33, as interpreted by Stephen Mitchell (1992)

 * At the highest level of satori from which people return, the point of consciousness becomes a surface or a solid which extends throughout the whole known universe. This used to be called fusion with the Universal Mind or God. In more modern terms you have done a mathematical transformation in which your centre of consciousness has ceased to be a travelling point and has become a surface or solid of consciousness... It was in this state that I experienced "myself" as melded and intertwined with hundreds of billions of other beings in a thin sheet of consciousness that was distributed around the galaxy. A "membrane".
 * John C. Lilly Tanks for the Memories : Floatation Tank Talks (1995)
 * No Self, No Fear.
 * Joseph Ledoux, The Deep History of Ourselves, ref.

M

 * The self is a simplification of the notion of soul, created to serve the purposes of the modern sciences of psychology and economics, both of which want you to be happy in a simple, straightforward way they can count.
 * Harvey Mansfield, “How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science”

 * Music is reflection of self, we just explain it, and then we get our checks in the mail.
 * Marshall Bruce Mathers III, "Sing For the Moment", The Eminem Show (2002)

 * Self-awareness is a complex, but carefully constructed illusion: we rightly place high value on the work of those mental agencies that appear able to reflect on the behavior of other agencies—especially our linguistic and ego-structure mechanisms.
 * Marvin Minsky, "K-Linesː A Theory of Memory" Cognitive Science 4, pp.117-133 (1980)

 * One's present personality cannot share all the thoughts of one's older personalities—and yet it has some sense that they exist. This is one reason why we feel that we possess an inner Self—a sort of ever-present person-friend, inside the mind, whom we can always ask for help.
 * Marvin Minsky, The Society Of Mind (1986)

 * Should one think of a city as having a Self?
 * Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine (2006)

 * It strikes me that self, not just my self, but all self, the phenomenon of self, is perhaps one field, one consciousness – perhaps there is only one ‘I’, perhaps our brains, our selves, our entire identity is little more than a label on a waveband. We are only us when we are here. At this particular moment in space and time, this particular locus, the overall awareness of the entire continuum happens to believe it is Alan Moore. Over there – [he points to another table in the pizza restaurant] – it happens to believe it is something else. I get the sense that if you can pull back from this particular locus, this web-site if you like, then you could be the whole net. All of us could be. That there is only one awareness here, that is trying out different patterns. We are going to have to come to some resolution about a lot of things in the next twenty years time, our notions of time, space, identity.
 * Alan Moore, in "Alan Moore Interview" by Matthew De Abaitua (1998), later published in Alan Moore: Conversations (2011) edited by Eric L. Berlatsky

 * Self is the medium thro' which Judgment's ray Can seldom pass without being turned astray.
 * Thomas Moore, "The Sceptic: A Philosophical Satire" (1809)

N

 * We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers: and with good reason. We have never looked for ourselves — so how are we ever supposed to find ourselves? ...We remain strange to ourselves out of necessity, we do not understand ourselves, we must confusedly mistake who we are, the motto, 'everyone is furthest from himself' applies to us for ever, - we are not 'knowers' when it comes to ourselves…
 * Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, Preface

O

 * Of course, "O'Blivion" was not the name I was born with. That's my television name. Soon, all of us will have special names — names designed to cause the cathode ray tube to resonate.
 * Professor Brian O'Blivion, in Videodrome, a 1983 film directed by David Cronenberg

 * Nosce te ipsum.
 * Know thyself.
 * Delphic maxim originating in Luxor Egypt inscribed in the pronaos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi as quoted by Pausanias, Description of Greece, 10.24.1.

R

 * The key to self-generated happiness (the only reliable kind) is the refusal to take oneself too seriously.
 * Tom Robbins, in "The Green Man : Tom Robbins" interviewed by Gregory Daurer, in High Times (12 June 2002)

S

 * This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
 * William Shakespeare, Hamlet (c. 1600-1602), act I, scene iii, lines 78–80. Polonius is speaking to Laertes.

 * People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.
 * Thomas Szasz (b. 1920), Hungarian-American psychiatrist, writer and academic. The Second Sin (1974)

T

 * You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic; the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration.
 * Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010) The Universal and the Particular, p. 54.

 * Human nature is so constituted that all see and judge better in the affairs of other people than in their own.
 * Terence, The Self-Tormentor (163 BC), III. i. 503.

V

 * What we do belongs to what we are; and what we are is what becomes of us.
 * Henry Van Dyke, Ships and Havens (1898), chapter 2, p. 10.

 * Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul.
 * Henry Van Dyke, The Prison and the Angel

W

 * To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
 * Oscar Wilde, 'Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young', (1894)

 * Self-image is the beginning and ending of living, I think.
 * Henry Winkler (b.1945), American actor, producer and director. Stated in his appearance on, The One Show, BBC1 (UK) television talk show, 15th May 2009.

title: Self