Howard Gardner Quotes

Thinking of someone else is what got me damned. It’s a mistake I don’t want to repeat. (Xypher) You know sometimes it’s by repeating our mistakes that we realize what went wrong the first time. Knowing that, we’re able to fix the mistake and move past it. (Acheron)

The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other people's.

Themes of redemption, temptation, and faith don't necessarily apply directly to religion. A lot of people find faith in their lives outside of God and still deal with notions of temptation and redemption that aren't religious.

It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we know what we ought to be.

Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems.

Living consciously is seeking to be aware of everything that bears on our interests, actions, values, purposes, and goals. It is the willingness to confront facts, pleasant or unpleasant. It is the desire to discover our mistakes and correct them . . . it is the quest to keep expanding our awareness and understanding, both of the world external to self and the world within.

Self knowledge is the beginning of self improvement.

I think it is very useful to know ourselves, but when we start naming and labeling, that is dangerous, that gets problematic. It negates that things are always changing. Besides, it's hard to pin a label onto something that's always moving.

Get to know yourself. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all... Knowing yourself and knowing the facts, you can judge whether you can change the situation so it is more to your liking. If you cannot--or if you do not know how to improve on things--then discipline yourself to the adjustments that will be necessary.

After all, without understanding yourself, what basis have you for right thinking?

Even with limited intelligence, knowing oneself is not as difficult as some say, but to act according to what one has realized about oneself in real life is as difficult as practicing anything else, compared to theory.

Time to go inward, man, I hope I have the nerve, to take inventory of the causes that I serve.

Upon reflection, I decided I had three main weaknesses: I was confused (evidenced by a lack of facts, an inability to coordinate my thoughts, and an inability to verbalize my ideas); I had a lack of confidence, which cause me to back down from forcefully stated positions; and I was overly emotional at the expense of careful, 'scientific' though. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.

I once read that people who study others are wise but those who study themselves are enlightened.

Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world. Yet from this lesson thou will learn to avoid the frog's foolish ambition of swelling to rival the bigness of the ox.

I find my past in my present, and from these forecast my future.

The ultimate question of who we are is set before us at all times and answered with every action.

It's funny because sometimes one doesn't actually consider these things for one's self until one's in a situation like this press conferece where one has to kind of think about it.

The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practised, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good. . . . God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.

The great chastisement of a knave is not to be known, but to know himself.

Sometimes he thinks that if he could only trace the path of his life carefully enough, everything would become clear. The ways that he screwed up would make sense. He closes his eyes tightly. His life wasn't always a mistake, he thinks, and he breathes uncertainly for awhile, trying to find a pathway into unconsciousness, into sleep.

I look at the past and I see myself.

Education best serves students by helping them be more self-reflective.

I do know my own mind,' protested Anne. 'The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.

Know thyself, for through thyself only thou canst know God.