When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.
IRVIN D. YALOMIf people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive?
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning.
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Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you “Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?” – Immediately you did not want to anymore; and when I asked you again you remained silent.
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If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
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…the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
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The death anxiety of many people is fueled … by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential.
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You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.
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Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer
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I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people.
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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What? ‘Borderline patients play games’? That what you said? Ernest, you’ll never be a real therapist if you think like that. That’s exactly what I meant earlier when I talked about the dangers of diagnosis.
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Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one’s life!
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Mature love is loving, not being loved.
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Look out the other’s window. Try to see the world as your patient sees it.
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The drive for power is not uncommonly motivated by this dynamic. One’s own fear and sense of limitation is avoided by enlarging oneself and one’s sphere of control.
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Reality always creeps in–the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.
IRVIN D. YALOM