Edith Stein Quotes

Are we our bodies? Is a small person less than a big person, then? If we were our bodies, then when we lost an arm, or a leg, would we be less, would we begin to fade from existence? No. We are the same person. We are not our bodies; we are our thoughts. As they form, they define who we are, and create the reality of our existence.

I--this thought which is called I--is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.

The word 'self' is as great a mystery as the word 'other'. It's just a polarity between two mysteries.

If the will did not exist, neither would there be that centre of the world, which we call the I.

All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.

And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

I have a body, but I am not my body. I have a face, but I am not my face.

Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.

I am Walter, a body, but more important than the body is my spirit.

A self is a frightening thing to waste, it's the lens through which one's whole life is viewed, and few people are willing to part with it, in death, or even imaginatively, in art.

I believe that it is made out of the same cloth of mind, but it is an add-on, it was something that was specialized to create what we call the self. And it exists for very special purposes and it has very special, and I think by and large good consequences, although not only good consequences.

I am not my body. My body is nothing without me.

You are not a human being. You are not your body, you are not your mind, and you are not your soul. These are things that You have. The You that has these things - indeed, that has given your Self these things - is far bigger than any of them, and even all of them put together.

In the phrase ' human being,' the word 'being' is much more important than the word 'human.'

The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.

We've all got an identity. You can't avoid it. It's what's left when you take everything else away.

Life is consciousness.

I am me, whatever that means. I am conscious.

Identity is this incredible invisible force that controls your whole life. It's invisible, like gravity is invisible, but it controls your whole life.

You were born as the one you are.

The self has the characteristic that it is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it from other objects and from the body.

I can explain my body and my brain, but there's something more. I can't explain my own existence - what makes me a unique human being.

Consciousness is indeed always with us. Everyone knows 'I am!' No one can deny his own being.

I describe myself as a human being.