“Your ego is your worst enemy.”
Many people know that quote, but few understand how true it is. Your ego can get in the way of your success and prevent you from achieving your goals. That’s why it’s important to check your ego and make sure it’s not holding you back. In this article, we will discuss 200 ego quotes that will help you do just that!
What is an Ego?
An ego is an individual’s sense of self-importance and pride. It can be a good thing if it’s balanced and doesn’t get in the way of our goals and dreams, but too much ego can lead to arrogance, selfishness, and even depression.
Ego Quotes
- “Ego is good.” – Thomas Leonard
- “I hope I don’t have an ego.” – Sandi Toksvig
- “I own and operate a ferocious ego.” – Bill Moyers
- “I’ve never encountered any star ego.” – Sajid Khan
- “I am someone without an ego.” – Ayushmann Khurrana
- “Where id was, there ego shall be.” – Sigmund Freud
- “There is no ego whatsoever in Salman.” – Kabir Khan
- “I don’t feel I have an alter ego.” – Dita Von Teese
- “You need a big ego to be an artist.” – Damien Hirst
- “The ego is a fascinating monster.” – Alanis Morissette
- “I had to let my ego go a long time ago.” – Sally Field
- “Everybody needs to lower his ego.” – Bhumibol Adulyadej
- “The ego is not master in its own house.” – Sigmund Freud
- “I love playing ego and insecurity combined.” – Jim Carrey
- “There are times when your ego has to contract.” – Rosalia
- “Fighting is a lot of ego, and that’s OK.” – Frank Shamrock
- “I don’t think I have an ego problem.” – Randall Cunningham
- “I like the moment when I break a man’s ego.” – Bobby Fischer
- “Nations have their ego, just like individuals.” – James Joyce
- “There’s no ego when you’re a ukulele player.” – Jake Shimabukuro
- “My performances have finally caught up with my ego.” – Ato Boldon
- “Ego is the immediate dictate of human consciousness.” – Max Planck
- “As a typical creative, I am all ego and insecurity!” – David Droga
- “People confuse ego, lust, insecurity with true love.” – Simon Cowell
- “There is a thin difference between confidence and ego.” – Pratik Gandhi
- “I’m very accessible. I don’t get into this ego thing.” – Scott Hamilton
- “Nothing ages as poorly as a beautiful woman’s ego.” – Paulina Porizkova
- “I look at the big picture and try not to create with ego.” – Frank Dukes
- “What’s important to me is that the ego hasn’t taken over.” – Kathy Burke
- “I try not to have too much of an ego. I’ll do anything.” – Rob Schneider
- “Ego is only fine when it is working for your motivation.” – Sunil Chhetri
- “My experience of the addict is: huge ego and low self-esteem.” – Tony Adams
- “My desire is to let go of my ego and let in His direction.” – Janine Turner
- “A man’s car is like an extension of their ego and their manhood.” – Shakira
- “Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ‘Ego’.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
- “My ego every day is more and more polite. I tame it.” – Alejandro Jodorowsky
- “Eventually my ego is going to be the size of the planet Earth.” – Justin Kan
- “The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.” – Alan Watts
- “Ego is to the true self what a flashlight is to a spotlight.” – John Bradshaw
- “CrossFit is amazing if you can leave your ego at the door.” – Garrett McNamara
- “I have no self-centeredness or ego about being a movie star.” – Shah Rukh Khan
- “You proceed from a false assumption: I have no ego to bruise.” – Leonard Nimoy
- “Ego is the great enemy. Ego will hold you back every single time.” – Nikki Sixx
- “If the cost is lowering one’s ego and a bit of money, so be it.” – Nayib Bukele
- “I have a huge ego and a huge inferiority complex at the same time.” – Barry Gibb
- “An actress must never lose her ego – without it she has no talent.” – Tom Lehrer
- “When it comes to doing my job, I keep my ego in my handbag.” – Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
- “Chess and me, it’s hard to take them apart. It’s like my alter ego.” – Bobby Fischer
- “I don’t trip all over my ego. I don’t mind being a second banana.” – Conchata Ferrell
- “Stupidity combined with arrogance and a huge ego will get you a long way.” – Chris Lowe
- “My awareness left my body and ego, and went on a grand tour of the cosmos.” – Jeff Lowe
- “The rules are: The only ego is the film, and you have to serve the film.” – Lee Daniels
- “When you’re older and wiser a lot of the ego has gone out of the window.” – Billy Ocean
- “You can either be a host to God, or a hostage to your ego. It’s your call.” – Wayne Dyer
- “I’m not one to get a big ego – I think it’s an Aussie thing, I just laugh.” – Liz Cambage
- “Sexual self-restraint is only a preliminary stage in the ego’s evolution.” – Muhammad Iqbal
- “The ultimate aim of the ego is not to see something, but to be something.” – Muhammad Iqbal
- “The ego is kind of a big, unwieldy thing. It’s not so easily tamed or subdued.” – Alan Ball
- “Gnarls Barkley is an alter ego and something like an out of body experience.” – CeeLo Green
- “Any time there is a lot of money or ego involved, people tend to behave badly.” – Brad Grey
- “You can’t let nobody step on your ego, dismantle your whole image for no reason.” – Jadakiss
- “Like any other, this is an industry where complexes, ego and politics abound.” – Kovai Sarala
- “Let’s face it; God has a big ego problem. Why do we always have to worship him?” – Bill Maher
- “I guess I have a little bit of an ego. I’m confidently cocky, you might say.” – Conor McGregor
- “You have to have an ego to play for any club; you have to look after yourself.” – Serge Gnabry
- “Goals must never be from your ego, but problems that cry for a solution.” – Robert H. Schuller
- “There’s a little more ego involved in these jobs than people might realize.” – Walter Cronkite
- “I think everyone is born 100 percent ego, and after that it’s just adjustment.” – Agnes Martin
- “Even though we want huge individual egos, our collective ego is unbelievable.” – Mike Krzyzewski
- “I think it’s pretentious to create art just for the sake of stroking the artists ego.” – Lou Reed
- “Ego is a social fiction for which one person at a time gets all the blame.” – Robert Anton Wilson
- “Anybody who puts himself on a ballot has to have a big ego, we have to have it.” – Michael Capuano
- “I’ve done ‘The Love Boat’ twice. I had a great time, but my ego rails against it.” – Peter Scolari
- “Ego is probably one of the biggest poisons we can have – it’s toxic to any environment.” – Jonny Kim
- “Tina Snow’ was more turnt up than anything I ever dropped, it’s my alter ego.” – Megan Thee Stallion
- “When you can take away the ego, you learn a lot about yourself and the world around you.” – Kevin Jonas
- “I’m a straight shooter, and most of the time my ego doesn’t interrupt my relationships.” – Gabriel Macht
- “The downfall of any leader in a sport’s team is when he gets carried away with his own ego.” – Toto Wolff
- “In a novel, I could submerge my ego in a character’s and let his perceptions take over.” – Elizabeth Moon
- “I’m not a hopeless romantic. I’m quite the reverse. I’m a nasty piece of work, an ego maniac.” – Hugh Grant
- “In retrospect I realize that the threat was about ego rather than the validity of the music.” – David Baker
- “The big thing was realizing for myself that I had tied my ego to the outcomes and to startups.” – Justin Kan
- “We’re an improv group and a sketch comedy group called the Tenderloins, that’s our alter ego.” – James Murray
- “Checking your ego, abandoning it, letting it go, is a huge part of recovery from addiction.” – Susannah Grant
- “I am not a superstar or an ego. I am just the same as I always was: Someone who plays football.” – N’Golo Kante
- “If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame.” – Jocko Willink
- “One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton
- “To have a little recognition, that is very nice, you dig. It is good for the ego, for the psyche.” – Dexter Gordon
- “I think one of the interesting things about poker is that once you let your ego in, you’re done for.” – Al Alvarez
- “Maybe, as a Chinese woman, I was never told I would be a filmmaker, so I didn’t have the ego set up.” – Chloe Zhao
- “The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody’s ego, that’s it, game over.” – Gordon Ramsay
- “I have a hard time with any sort of criticism; not because I have some huge ego or anything like that.” – Jim Root
- “In ‘Legend,’ I was burning with ego. In ‘JJN,’ I am playing someone who can die for his prestige.” – Jagapathi Babu
- “Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.” – Colin Powell
- “Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.” – Colin Powell
- “I think you see more of like, the party side of me, which I call Snooki, it’s kind of my alter ego.” – Nicole Polizzi
- “I think your ego gets in the way of making something good because it kind of blinds you from the actual art.” – Mitski
- “Louis van Gaal was not always easy-care. He wanted to ‘Vangaalise’ our club. He has a huge ego.” – Karl-Heinz Rummenigge
- “My talent is my talent. I ain’t really tripping off no ego; I just like to make good music with good people.” – Meek Mill
- “The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It’s the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages.” – Will Durant
- “Too many actors get on an ego trip and won’t do commercials, so they sit around for 20 years between jobs.” – Vic Tayback
- “The whole business is built on ego, vanity, self-satisfaction, and it’s total crap to pretend it’s not.” – George Michael
- “I don’t want the giant ego. I don’t want to become Kevin Costner, singing on the soundtrack to The Postman.” – Joss Whedon
- “The personality cult of the ego does not work down a coal mine and it does not work in the Labour party.” – Dennis Skinner
- “When everyone is buying into a system and puts their ego to the side, that’s when greatness happens.” – Karl-Anthony Towns
- “Being a singer is all about me. About ego. Being a mom is all about being selfless – two different worlds.” – Gwen Stefani
- “Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.” – W. H. Auden
- “I’d always surfed with my ego – I had to get the biggest, best wave – and a lot of it was for survival.” – Garrett McNamara
- “Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, and lessens the frictions of social contacts.” – Clare Boothe Luce
- “We Are Bulletproof: The Eternal’ demonstrates that we will keep going despite the difficulties. It reveals our ego.” – J-Hope
- “What I’ve found in my research is that realism and self-honesty are the antidote to ego, hubris, and delusion.” – Ryan Holiday
- “To say it very honestly, removed from ego, standup is just a thing that I understood, a God-given ability.” – Jerrod Carmichael
- “Guys need attention. They need that nourishment, that little stroke of the ego that gets them by every now and then.” – Rihanna
- “The great corrupter of public man is the ego. Looking at the mirror distracts one’s attention from the problem.” – Dean Acheson
- “When a director you admire says that he wants to work with you, it’s always a compliment, very good for your ego.” – Lea Seydoux
- “The money was just coming so fast and so easy that my ego led me to believe that, ‘Oh, this is my life forever.'” – Spencer Pratt
- “Childish egocentrism is, in its essence, an inability to differentiate between the ego and the social environment.” – Jean Piaget
- “Surrealism – in particular with Salvador Dali – was all about ego. It was all about extreme individualism.” – Alejandro Jodorowsky
- “As you get older, there’s a loosening of the ties to the ego and the posturing of who you are and how you behave.” – Pierce Brosnan
- “Once you leave your ego behind and let the good light in, you shine good light back. That may be a bit Buddhist but so what.” – Goldie
- “Everyone in showbiz is driven by ego, so how do you go from having loads of fame to working at 7-11? You can’t do it!” – Ryan Seacrest
- “Don’t let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn’t go with it.” – Colin Powell
- “Be thankful for all successes, lose your ego, take risks, fail fast, and if you don’t absolutely love what you do, run!” – Cynthia Rowley
- “The Ego is partly free. partly determined, and reaches fuller freedom by approaching the Individual who is most free: God.” – Muhammad Iqbal
- “Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.” – Reid Hoffman
- “Check your ego at the door. The ego can be the great success inhibitor. It can kill opportunities, and it can kill success.” – Dwayne Johnson
- “It’s instinct: Men love to feel like they take care of you. Knowing you feel protected makes his ego grow two sizes bigger.” – Matthew Hussey
- “It’s in the act of having to do things that you don’t want to that you learn something about moving past the self. Past the ego.” – bell hooks
- “What I hate is that not many people admit to having a big ego, but you have to – and there’s nothing wrong with it.” – Marina and the Diamonds
- “Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.” – Marina Abramovic
- “Golf is a game of ego, but it is also a game of integrity: the most important thing is you do what is right when no one is looking.” – Tom Watson
- “Every girl has a dream – she wants a perfect husband. But that is not possible. There will be ego clashes and one has to compromise.” – Jaya Prada
- “I think much has been made of this alter ego business. I mean, I actually stopped creating characters in 1975 – for albums, anyway.” – David Bowie
- “Leadership is not a popularity contest; it’s about leaving your ego at the door. The name of the game is to lead without a title.” – Robin S. Sharma
- “Money, ego, revenge and the seduction of being a media darling is pretty powerful stuff, and, John Bolton is proving he’s not immune.” – Trish Regan
- “When you see things upside down, the ego can be extraordinarily funny; it’s absurd. But it’s tragic at the same time.” – Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
- “The biggest obstacle that stalls leaders’ growth is the human ego. When leaders start to think they know it all, they stop growing.” – Ken Blanchard
- “But I think Barry Sonnenfeld let his ego go out of control. He told me in a meeting that he had to do something to make it his film.” – Robert Conrad
- “To me, music is art and fashion is art, but fame? Fame isn’t art, but the person you become when you’re famous – your alter ego – that’s art.” – Cardi B
- “If I think the role is worth it and the director is someone I hold in high regard, I have no hassles. Why let ego come in the way of work?” – Pooja Batra
- “Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient’s ego freedom to decide one way or another.” – Sigmund Freud
- “Before, when I was 19-0, I was undefeated and I was 23, 24 years old. Yeah, I was cocky, I had a little bit of ego. I had to get humbled.” – Diego Sanchez
- “I used to get some ego thing out of saying I wasn’t a star, just an actress. Forget it. I’m a star. I wanted it. I worked for it. I got it.” – Valerie Harper
- “My mother always told me never offend a man’s ego and never hurt a woman’s emotions – an advice I will not forget to pass on to my daughter.” – Soha Ali Khan
- “A wrong concept misleads the understanding; a wrong deed degrades the whole man, and may eventually demolish the structure of the human ego.” – Muhammad Iqbal
- “We must go beyond the constant clamor of ego, beyond the tools of logic and reason, to the still, calm place within us: the realm of the soul.” – Deepak Chopra
- “I never really got the chance to scream about some of the painful things. In the book, I look at my whole life experience, at ego and fame, too.” – Rita Marley
- “Leave your ego at the door every morning, and just do some truly great work. Few things will make you feel better than a job brilliantly done.” – Robin S. Sharma
- “The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness, because it affords a stronger temptation to the ego.” – Northrop Frye
- “The physical ego serves as its own worst enemy when, by delusive material behavior, it eclipses its true nature as the ever blessed soul.” – Paramahansa Yogananda
- “I have a big ego, but I don’t buy into it. I can’t live off the ego. It’s an honor that I get to be that guy onstage. It’s not something I earned.” – Steven Tyler
- “I get pretty terrified, to be honest, when I’m on tour. You really have to muster a lot of ego to go our there, which I find rather draining.” – Michael Hutchence
- “I gave up my fur coats years ago – what an ego trip, walking around wearing cut-up animals. Besides, fur coats don’t last. I’d rather have diamonds.” – Amanda Blake
- “I have no ego investment in being on the air. I don’t knock others for whom that kind of attention is like oxygen, but I don’t miss anything about it.” – Hugh Downs
- “I wish everybody in the world liked me, but a lot of them don’t. That’s because my whatever – my weakness, my vulnerability, my ego, whatever it is.” – Colin Cowherd
- “It’s very important in a leadership role not to place your ego at the foreground and not to judge everything in relationship to how your ego is fed.” – Ruth J. Simmons
- “It’s really important to create something, like with my creations as a musician. Just let it flow. Focus on how to deliver message to audience. Don’t get ego.” – Miyavi
- “My poems getting published in Russia doesn’t make me feel in any fashion, to tell you the truth. I’m not trying to be coy, but it doesn’t tickle my ego.” – Joseph Brodsky
- “That which comes and goes, rises and sets, is born and dies is the ego. That which always abides, never changes, and is devoid of qualities is the Self.” – Ramana Maharshi
- “The column’s worked out great for me. I’ve gotten a ton of ego satisfaction, had a lot of fun, won a batch of prizes and occasionally done some public good.” – Allan Sloan
- “As the ego cogito, subjectivity is the consciousness that represents something, relates this representation back to itself, and so gathers with itself.” – Martin Heidegger
- “I want people to hear the honesty in my singing, and that I’m not hiding behind anything. It’s raw. It’s not for any arrogance or ego. It’s just pure feelings.” – Tom Odell
- “Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing.” – Theodor W. Adorno
- “It’s really nice to look around the other top skips in curling and know that I’m six, eight, 10 years younger than some of them. That is good on the ego.” – Brendan Bottcher
- “It’s good to have a healthy ego because that pushes you to succeed. But when you cross a line, and your views are not balanced, that’s when you get into trouble.” – Judy Smith
- “Comfort and luxury are usually the chief requirements of life for your ego – its top priorities tend to be accumulations, achievements, and the approval of others.” – Wayne Dyer
- “I’m always gonna be all over my CD the most, of course. My talent is my talent. I ain’t really tripping off no ego; I just like to make good music with good people.” – Meek Mill
- “The personal ego already has a strong element of dysfunction, but the collective ego is, frequently, even more dysfunctional, to the point of absolute insanity.” – Eckhart Tolle
- “What I love about Salman bhai is that he’s one superstar minus any ego. And you see people around, who haven’t achieved much in life, yet their ego is too strong.” – Vatsal Sheth
- “I just try to make the best record I can make, without any ego or comparisons at all. I never sit there and tell myself it’s going to be a masterpiece or anything!” – Max Cavalera
- “You cannot cave in saying something that is against your conscience and belief. That self-righteous ego is a must for any self-respecting, truth-loving person.” – Prashant Bhushan
- “There are so many things to take into account – your ambition, your ego, the press, the consumers. You can never be sure that you’ll be on top of the pile again.” – Giorgio Armani
- “Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent.” – Sigmund Freud
- “I don’t think most guys can handle a mic even close to what I do if I’m honest and I say that with no ego, that’s the honest truth. I know what I do and I’m self aware.” – Eli Drake
- “I had heard a lot of key words about Harshad Mehta in books, documentaries, on the Internet, and in the script like his passion, greed, a bit of ego, and confidence.” – Pratik Gandhi
- “Professional societies are sooner or later fractured by the ego of their leaders. Everyone wants to be president, chairman, CEO; no one wants to be a mere follower.” – F. Sionil Jose
- “In America they like my spicy TV alter ego, probably because there were a lot of Italians and Hispanics in the country, but the real L.A. life is a hard-working one.” – Bruno Tonioli
- “Usually, new producers and writers want to put their stamp on a show. They don’t want to continue what’s working. They want to reinvent the wheel. It’s an ego thing.” – Anthony Geary
- “Me and Dre go back so far – a long 30 years – even before N.W.A. The way we talk to each other now is the same way we talked when we first met. No big heads, no ego stuff.” – DJ Yella
- “It’s definitely a nudge for your ego when you realize, ‘Hey, I’ve only lost to champions and former champions and, you know, title challengers,’ and stuff like that.” – Jared Cannonier
- “Rush Limbaugh’s pathetic abuse of logic, his absurd pomposity, his relentless self-promotion, his ridiculous ego – now those, friends, are appropriate targets for satire.” – Molly Ivins
- “A lot of my work has to do with not allowing my characters to have an ego in a way that the stomach doesn’t have an ego when it’s wanting to throw up. It just does it.” – Matthew Barney
- “We are shallow because we are ‘mayabang,’ ego driven, and do not have the humility to understand that we are only human, much too human to mistake knowledge for wisdom.” – F. Sionil Jose
- “An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment – his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego.” – Alec Guinness
- “We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.” – Pope Benedict XVI
- “We are constantly protecting the male ego, and it’s a disservice to men. If a man has any sensitivity or intelligence, he wants to get the straight scoop from his girlfriend.” – Betty Dodson
- “I believe that the biggest problem that humanity faces is an ego sensitivity to finding out whether one is right or wrong and identifying what one’s strengths and weaknesses are.” – Ray Dalio
- “Parents are destined to sin against their kids; it’s inevitable. As is narcissism and the human condition. Everyone has their ego and their ambitions. Life happens in between.” – Alice Ripley
- “To me, morality and family is more important than anything else in life. You don’t get a second chance at it. Vanity, ego and all that is not something I get to take to the grave.” – Jim Breuer
- “Ego is hilarious – especially the vanity of a comedian. As soon as you see one start worrying about how cool he is or about how many stadiums he can fill, he stops being funny.” – Ricky Gervais
- “People say money changes people. So does ego and so does social media. And so does the press. I think that all of that mixed in between – you really gotta keep yourself grounded.” – Jeannie Mai
- “Of course I have an ego, but you have to have an ego. You have to be incredibly competitive. I can get competitive at times, way too much, and it becomes a little bit obsessive.” – Simon Cowell
- “Without a sense of place the work is often reduced to a cry of voices in empty rooms, a literature of the self, at its best poetic music; at its worst a thin gruel of the ego.” – William Kennedy
- “Every great player has a big character. I don’t know any player with a lot of quality who just has quality – you have to have an ego and character to be the main person on the pitch.” – Samir Nasri
- “There’s something real in women’s intuition. It’s an accurate signpost for decision making, but it usually bumps up against man’s logic. So we have to put ego aside and listen to them.” – Jon Voight
- “I am a big self-doubter. I suffer from Impostor Syndrome. Whenever I start a new job, I think: ‘I’m going to be found out.’ I don’t have a huge ego or enormous belief in my own talent.” – Les Dennis
- “Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don’t want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.” – Karen Armstrong
- “A lot of people have this ego need that makes them want to believe that Earth is the center of the universe and humans are the most important species, the supreme expression of creation.” – Ann Druyan
- “When it is working, you completely go into another place, you’re tapping into things that are totally universal, completely beyond your ego and your own self. That’s what it’s all about.” – Keith Haring
- “If Brian Clough, who had the ego the size of 15 houses, had the humility to go for an interview for the England job then the rest of us mortals should be able to subject ourselves to that.” – Martin O’Neill
Wrapping Up
Ego is a powerful force that can drive us on to achieve greatness, or lead us astray if we allow it. It’s important to remember the words of these wise people and strive to keep our egos in check while still believing in ourselves. By doing so, we are more likely to unlock our true potential and live an examined life full of success, peace, and compassion.
The journey towards self-improvement begins with gaining awareness and understanding the impact that our ego can have on our lives. We must be mindful of how it affects our decisions and interactions with others, as well as work to ensure that we don’t let it get in the way of reaching our goals. Only then can we truly take ownership of our lives and lead the life that we want to live—a life with purpose, meaning, and fulfillment.
By reflecting on these inspirational quotes, we can cultivate a better understanding of how ego works and develop more effective strategies for dealing with it in our own lives. Ultimately, by managing our egos in a healthy way, we can free ourselves from the limitations of our minds and reach for higher goals.
With this understanding, let us all strive to live an ego-free life! Thank you for reading.
Best of luck on your journey towards personal growth!
