From Justification to Self-Knowledge

The next point that I will mention is that you all justify yourselves very easily. To justify oneself means to take the view that you are right and maintain it. People even justify their negative states and discard the witness of inner taste. One way is to deny you are negative. People do not admit they are wrong. Do you know why?

Well, try to observe and thus get to know the reason. This knowledge takes time—indeed, years, and is not good for conceit and self-worship. To digress for a moment: the injunction written on the Temple of Delphi in Ancient Greece was KNOW THYSELF. This shows at once that it was an Esoteric School. An ordinary life-school is about knowledge in general: an Esoteric School is about self-knowledge.

Maurice Nicoll, "Commentary on Doing the Work" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 5, p. 1683)