Our education, our environment, our whole culture insists that we must become something. Our philosophies, our religions and sacred books all say the same thing. But now I see that the very process of becoming something implies envy, which means that I am not satisfied with being what I am; and I want to understand what I am, I want to find out why I am always comparing myself with another, trying to become something; and in understanding what I am there is no need for discipline. In the process of that understanding, integration comes into being. The contradiction in me yields to the understanding of myself, and this in turn brings an action which is integral, whole.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti in Think on These Things
Be who you are and be that well.
—Francis de Sales
One's eyes are what one is, one's mouth is what one becomes.
—John Galsworthy
What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.
—Abraham Maslow
Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything.
—Floyd Dell
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
—G. K. Chesterton
At times I think and at times I am.
—Paul Valéry