If you choose not to live self-responsibly, you count on others to make up your default. No one abjures self-responsibility on a desert island.

— Nathaniel Branden

In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions.

— Nathaniel Branden

In a world in which the total of human knowledge is doubling about every ten years, our security can rest only on our ability to learn.

— Nathaniel Branden

Integrity is congruence between what you know what you profess, and what you do.

— Nathaniel Branden

In the inner courtroom of my mind, mine is the only judgment that counts.

— Nathaniel Branden

It is a mistake to look at someone who is self-assertive and say, "It's easy for her, she has good self-esteem." One of the ways you build self-esteem is by being self-assertive when it is not easy to do so. There are always times when self-assertiveness requires courage, no matter how high your self-esteem.

— Nathaniel Branden

It is humiliating to realize that when you drive yourself underground, when you fake who you are, often you do so for people you do not even like or respect.

— Nathaniel Branden

It is naive to think that self-assertiveness is easy. To live self-assertively--which means to live authentically--is an act of high courage. That is why so many people spend the better part of their lives in hiding--from others and also from themselves.

— Nathaniel Branden

It is not only negative feelings that become blocked. The repression extends to more and more of his emotional capacity. When one is given an anesthetic in preparation for surgery, it is not merely the capacity to experience pain that is suspended; the capacity to experience pleasure goes also - because what is blocked is the capacity to experience *feeling*. The same principle applies to the repression of emotions." Chapter 1: Discovering the Unknown Self, pg. 9, Bantam Edition, 1984

— Nathaniel Branden

It is painful to face the self we know we have never had the integrity to honor and assert.

— Nathaniel Branden