# Quote — Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks

> Every human being has been conditioned to think and behave in certain ways– conditioned genetically as well as by their childhood experiences and their cultural environment. That is not who they are, but that is who they appear to be. When you pronounce judgment upon someone, you confuse those conditioned mind patterns with who they are. To do that is in itself a deeply conditioned and unconscious pattern. You give them a conceptual identity, and that false identity becomes a prison not only for the other person but also for yourself. (Ch 8)

- Author: [Eckhart Tolle](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle.md)
- Book: [Stillness Speaks](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/stillness-speaks.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eckhart_Tolle#Stillness_Speaks_(2003)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/stillness-speaks/every-human-being

## More from this book

> By knowing yourself as the awareness in which phenomenal existence happens, you become free of dependency on phenomena and free of self seeking in situations, places, and conditions. In other words, what happens or doesn't happen is not that important anymore. Things lose their heaviness, their seriousness. A playfulness comes into your life. You recognize this world as a cosmic dance, the dance of form. (Ch 5)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/stillness-speaks/by-knowing-yourself.md)

> The habitual and reactive “no” strengthens the ego. “Yes” weakens it. Your form identity, the ego, cannot survive surrender. (Ch 6)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/stillness-speaks/the-habitual-and.md)

> Most people's lives are run by desire and fear. Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something, and thereby become diminished and be less. These two movements obscure the fact that being cannot be given or taken away. Being in its fullness is already within you, now. (Ch 5)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eckhart-tolle/stillness-speaks/most-peoples-lives.md)