If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.
There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves.
Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.
When we were in the Dark Ages, it was a question of humanity somehow managing to forget about itself. We put God in the centre of society, and people forgot about their own nature and desires. There was a huge deal of repression.
He who cries, 'What do I care about universality? I only know what is in me,' does not know even that.
To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom and of old age. Youth is wholly experimental. The essence and charm of that unquiet and delightful epoch is ignorance of self as well as ignorance of life.
A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.
