quotations and passages on ego

One may understand the cosmos,
but never the ego; the self is
more distant than any star.

G.K. Chesterton

The foundation of the Buddha's teachings lies in compassion,
and the reason for practicing the teachings is to wipe out
the persistence of ego, the number-one enemy of compassion.

The Dalai Lama

The ego is the single biggest obstruction to the achievement of anything. Between-ness
is the act of acting without ego. You act, but you are not the actor.
You do things, but you are not the doer--and you know you are not the doer.
It's the ability to hold the head at a dead standstill in order to effect certain changes.
You desire the change, but you do not care if it comes to pass.

Richard Rose

If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego
and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need
to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge.
Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It's very
important to be aware of them every time they come up.

Deepak Chopra

I measure what's going on, and I adapt to it. I try to get
my ego out of the way. The market is smarter than I am so I bend.

Martin Zweig

The main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of
the bureaucracy of ego. This means stepping out of ego's
constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental
version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgment, comfort,
or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking. One must
step out of spiritual materialism.

Trungpa Chogyam

The ego, as a collection of our past experiences, is continually offering miserable lines of thought. It’s as if there were a stream with little fish swimming by, and when we hook one of them there is a judgment. The ego is constantly judging everybody and everything. It has its constant little chit chat about things
that can happen in the future, things about the past, too, and these are the little fish that swim by. And what we learn to do—this is why it takes work—is to not reach out and grab a fish.

Hugh Prather

Ego could be defined as whatever covers up basic goodness. From an
experiential point of view, what is ego covering up? It's covering up
our experience of just being here, just fully being where we are,
so that we can relate with the immediacy of our experience. Egolessness
is a state of mind that has complete confidence in the sacredness
of the world. It is unconditional well being, unconditional joy
that includes all the different qualities of our experience.

Pema Chodron

The ego is not a thing but a subtle effort, and you cannot use
effort to get rid of effort - you end up with two efforts instead
of one. The ego itself is a perfect manifestation of the Divine,
and it is best handled by resting in Freedom, not by trying
to get rid of it, which simply increases the effort of the ego itself.

Ken Wilber

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that
when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

Colin Powell

The ego is that ugly little troll that lives underneath the bridge
between your mind and your heart.

Gael Greene

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Articles and book excerpts on ego:

Your Higher Self Wayne Dyer

The ego can achieve simple pleasures: momentary satisfaction with its achievements,
happiness with its new car, for instance. But it cannot itself create any of the higher
feelings. Take love, for example: the only love the ego knows is strategic, a manipulative
transaction in which it gives to get. It gives kindness to be liked, praise to be praised,
approval to be approved of, and love to be loved. This conditional love is shallow at
best and usually turns into hurt or even hate when the transaction doesn't go as planned.
Similarly, the ego is not the source of compassion, joy, or forgiveness, either. When
these feelings come, all the ego can do is identify with them and start down the path of
unworthiness or imagine that it has reached new spiritual heights. The ego is at most a
voyeur when there is a positive feeling and at worst an impostor. Ultimately, the ego's
inability to maintain any kind of positive feeling state results in a kind of low-level or
background state of dissatisfaction that is the very note of the ego.

Richard Moss

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing,
fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.

Rainer Maria Rilke

To feel life is meaningless unless "I" can be permanent
is like having desperately fallen in love with an inch.

Alan Watts

Happy are those who have overcome their egos; happy are those who
have attained peace; happy are those who have found the Truth.

the Buddha

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