How does the personality come into being? By memory. By identifying the present with the past and projecting it into the future. Think of yourself as momentary, without past and future, and your personality dissolves.

Not everyone is allotted the chance to become a personality; most remain types, and never experience the rigor of becoming an individual. But those who do so inevitably discover that these struggles bring them into conflict with the normal life of average people and the traditional values and bourgeois conventions that they uphold. A personality is the product of a clash between two opposing forces: the urge to create a life of one's own and the insistence by the world around us that we conform. Nobody can develop a personality unless he undergoes revolutionary experiences. The extent of those experiences differs, of course, from person to person, as does the capacity to lead a life that is truly personal and unique.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

Gradually my experience has forced me to conclude that the individual has within himself the capacity and the tendency, latent if not evident, to move forward toward maturity. In a suitable psychological climate this tendency is released, and becomes actual rather than potential. It is evident in the capacity of the individual to understand those aspects of his life and of himself which are causing him pain and dissatisfaction, an understanding which probes beneath his conscious knowledge of himself into those experiences which he has hidden from himself because of their threatening nature. It shows itself in the tendency to reorganize his personality and his relationship to life in ways which are regarded as more mature. Whether one calls it a growth tendency, a drive toward self-actualization, or a forward-moving directional tendency, it is the mainspring of life, and is, in the last analysis, the tendency upon which all psychotherapy depends. It is the urge which is evident in all organic and human life — to expand, extend, become autonomous, develop, mature — the tendency to express and activate all the capacities of the organism, to the extent that such activation enhances the organism or the self.

In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others.

Ego expands to fill the space not filled with knowledge.

one of the clearest signs of personal growth is greater self-love, self-awareness, and love for all people.

Schwartz's research suggests something important: we can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point. Our inborn temperaments influence us, regardless of the lives we lead. A sizeable part of who we are is ordained by our genes, by our brains, by our nervous systems. And yet the elasticity that Schwartz found in some of the high-reactive teens also suggests the converse: we have free will and can use it to shape our personalities.

The man who never weakens when things are against him will grow stronger and stronger until all things will delight to be for him. He will finally have all the strength he may desire or need. Be always strong and you will always be stronger.Picture in your mind your own best idea of what a strong, well-developed individuality would necessarily be, and then think of yourself as becoming more and more like that picture. In this connection it is well to remember that we gradually grow into the likeness of that which we think of the most. Therefore, if you have a very clear idea of a highly developed individuality, and think a great deal of that individuality with a strong, positive desire to develop such an individuality, you will gradually and surely move towards that lofty ideal.

"...the capacity to identify with others is definitely not gained all at once or from the start. The mind has to increase its capacity for inclusiveness through a slow and arduous growth process, and thus this capacity gets a little bigger (moving from egocentric to ethnocentric — from "me" to "us"), then a little bigger (from ethnocentric to worldcentric — from "us" to "all of us"), and a little bigger still (from worldcentric to integral, which starts to include even other species, resulting eventually in a "cosmic consciousness" — from "all of us" to "all of reality).

had been a year earlier. Looking back, it had been a year of growth. Paul’s personality had enlarged, he’d gained further wisdom, if not salary,

In studying the history of the human mind one is impressed again and again by the fact that the growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and that each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement. One could almost say that nothing is more hateful to man than to give up even a particle of his unconsciousness. Ask those who have tried to introduce a new idea!

TO HAVE MORE THAN YOU’VE GOT, BECOME MORE THAN YOU ARE.

You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.