Best 2380 quotes in «identity quotes» category

As I turned to leave the tent, she said, "Don't worry. Your own mother wouldn't know you." I said, "She never has.

...as I was sifting through a heap of old and new "identity cards," I noticed that something was missing: my identity.

As is the case with many adolescents, Lewis's increased command over over the things of the world brought with it a corresponding atrophy of the moral sense.

As many Chinas as there were, there were that many Charleses as well. Every immigrant is the person he might have been and the person he is, and his homeland is at once the place it would have been to him from the inside and the place it must be to him from the outside.

a small nation resembles a big family and likes to describe itself that way. In the language of the smallest European people, in Icelandic, the term for "family" is fjölskylda; the etymology is eloquent: skylda means "obligation"; fjöl means "multiple." Family is thus "a multiple obligation." Icelanders have a single word for "family ties": fjölskyldubönd: "the cords (bönd) of multiple obligations." Thus in the big family that is a small country, the artist is bound in multiple ways, by multiple cords. When Nietzsche noisily savaged the German character, when Stendhal announced that he preferred Italy to his homeland, no German or Frenchman took offense; if a Greek or a Czech dared to say the same thing, his family would curse him as a detestable traitor.

As men, we often identify with our career, or some thing that we DO. But what we DO is not who we ARE.

a square is not just about light, air, proportion, and people. It must also give form to some shared notion of civic identity. [Michael Kimmelman, "Culture: Power of the Place"].

As the conference continued it occurred to me finally that it wasn't really about Indian history as it was written, but really about rewriting it by taking a fresh look at race, ethnicity, gender, and a mix of sociocultural questions... I just couldn't believe how far along the desi scene was, not just socially but intellectually, how many people were out there thinking about it. This whole event so far rocked my world, muddled me still more, and delivered a series of tiny epiphanies, all at the same time. To be honest, I was quite intimidated by the dialogue going on, as well as by the passion and conviction of these people on so many subjects which I, frankly, had never really even thought about. ...A history of a people in transit -- what could that be card catalogued under? And the history of the ABCD. Everyone seemed to know about this ABCD thing -- that didn't seem very confused to me! And it was a relatively new phenomenon; it had never occurred to me that things going on now could have a history already. The moments that made up my life in the present tense seemed so fleetingly urgent and self-contained to me: I'd always felt my life had very little to do with my parents' and especially their parents' histories...and that it would have very little effect on anything to come. But the way these people were talking -- about desis in Hollywood; South Asian Studies departments; the relatively new Asian Indian slot on the census -- was hummingly sculpting the air, as if they were making history as they spoke. Making it, messily but surely, even simply by speaking. I was feeling it, too -- a sense of history in the making. But where did I fit in to any of it? And how come no one had told me?

As the days dwindled towards the end of the week I knew only one thing: I couldn't return to our old life. Haroon had taken Honour and Al with him,

As the nation diversifies, the homogeneous communities that people seem to prefer become increasingly fine grained. When immigrants become landlords, many rent only to people from their own country. Apartment buildings can become entirely Korean, Salvadoran, or Guatemalan, for example. Immigrant landlords are often unaware of non-discrimination laws, and do not hesitate to tell others they are not welcome. A lawyer for Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles noted that some managers rent only to people from a particular state of Mexico, adding, 'Our fair housing laws haven't even anticipated that.

As the social matrix becomes increasingly subject to rapid fluctuations, throwing out anchors into a collectivised past becomes more prominent than movement into a future. The desire to establish a core identity within the profusion of styles has led to image building becoming an industry in itself—as much reflected by the tactics of political groups and corporate bodies, as in the fetishistic scramble for designer labels and trendy occult symbols. Identity has, therefore, become another commodity to be traded in the marketplace. The gulf between objective icons and the Illusory has widened to such an extent that illusions have come to equal value.

A story meant to motivate all and sundry irrespective of their circumstances

As we walk down the steps to the unchartered rims of our life, we may become aware of unsuspected beacons we have ignored thus far, discover unsolved enigmas of our identity and so get insight into the undisclosed intricacies of our shared environment. ( "Only silence remained" )

As you understand more, you will become more.

At a certain point in his life he stopped searching for himself in everything that exists and gave in to temptations. Or, as you say, he sinned and later fled.

At any moment when you are you, you are you without the memory of yourself because if you remember yourself while you are you, you are not for the purposes of creating you.

Atheism tells him what he isn’t, and like all of us he yearns to know what he is.

At eighteen, she already looks like a woman of sorrows and as her breaths start becoming shorter, tired of looking over her shoulder, she only wants to get away from this city where no one can fathom her love- boundless and profane and real, like her skin and her lips and the insides of her thighs. She knows she can smile, smell like the others. Her skin would bleed too if pricked and yet this reality does not belong to the ones sleeping on the platform floor; this reality is hers and her alone. Thus when she puts the mirror back, she rummages in her handbag, searching for that thing called identity: some of it lost somewhere in the railway colony she had just left behind, some in Sudhanshu’s left jacket pocket, the rest of it scattered here around broken teacups on railings, totally aberrant and arbitrary.

At least when one speaks of oneself one is passionate, well-informed and specific.

A TODOS, en algún momento, se nos ha revelado nuestra existencia como algo particular, intransferible y precioso. Casi siempre esta revelación se sitúa en la adolescencia. El descubrimiento de nosotros mismos se manifiesta como un sabernos solos; entre el mundo y nosotros se abre una impalpable, transparente muralla: la de nuestra conciencia.

A transformation, especially one that is deliberately sought, is often perceived as something disloyal, threatening.

...at some point we must achieve our identity -we can't be always in adolescence seeking who we are...

At the end of time I want my art to stand up and my soul to bow down.

At the same time she felt a tremendous, consuming, uncertainty that cancelled out everything, that left her with nothing...She had come to that city looking for another version of herself, a transfiguration. But she understood that her identity was insidious, a root that she would never be able to pull up, a prison in which she would be trapped. Al tempo stesso sentiva un'incertezza tremenda che la consumava, che cancellava tutto, che la lasciava senza nulla...Era venuta in questa città cercando un'altra versioe di sé, una transfigurazione. Ma aveva capito che la sua identitá era insidiosa, una radice che lei non sarebbe mai riuscita a estirpare, un carcere in cui si sarebbe incastrata.

At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities - to clarify just who it is we really are? -Richard

Auf dem allerersten Foto, das von mir geschossen wurde, liege ich auf der Säuglingsstation, eingewickelt in eine gelbe Decke. Nicht blau, wie all die anderen Jungen, und auch nicht rosa wie die Mädchen. Es war eine gelbe Decke, und ich habe sie mein Leben lang aufgehoben. Ich schlief jede Nacht damit. Selbst als es mir peinlich wurde, weil ich zu alt dafür war, liebte ich diese Decke. Aber ich habe eben immer Sachen geliebt, die meine Liebe nicht erwiderten. Ich habe mich immer gefragt, ob die Leute, die mich und meine gelbe Decke zwischen den anderen Babys sahen, mich für einen Jungen oder ein Mädchen hielten. Ob es überhaupt eine Rolle spielte. Ob ich an meinem ersten Tag auf dieser Erde vielleicht keins von beidem war. Ich war einfach nur schön.

Awareness is not a school quiz that can be passed by reading and memorizing some facts. It’s a journey that is fueled by our intent to be open, honest, and free.

Awareness influences and enables all that we are and all that we strive for.

A woman made of parts is a dangerous thing," Grandma says. "You never know when she'll throw away a piece you may need...

A young woman faces the decision of whether to marry a certain man whom she loves but who has deeply rooted, traditional ideas concerning marriage, family life, and the roles of men and women in each. A sober assessment of her future tell the woman that each of the two alternatives offers real but contrasting goods. One life offers the possibility of a greater degree of personal independence, the chance to pursue a career, perhaps more risk and adventure, while the other offers the rewards of parenting, stability, and a life together with a man whom, after all, she is in love with. In order to choose in a self-determined mode the woman must realize that the decision she faces involves more than the choice between two particular actions; it is also a choice between two distinct identities. In posing the questions "Who am I? Which of the two lives is really me?" she asks herself not a factual question about her identity but a fundamental practical question about the relative values of distinct and incommensurable goods. The point I take to be implicit in Tugendhat's (and Fichte's) view of the practical subject is that it would be mistaken to suppose that the woman had at her disposal an already established hierarchy of values that she must simply consult in order to decide whether to marry. Rather, her decision, if self-determined, must proceed from a ranking of values that emerges only in the process of reflecting upon the kind of person she wants to be.

A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another.... One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.

A woman will always be insecure if she attaches her identity and sense of worth to the amount of male attention she gets.

Basing your identity on sexuality is like building a house on a foundation of pudding. - D. Travers Scott

Base your self-worth on yourself, on what you, not others think.

Bburke used to, whenever he went to the city to catch a Yankees game, throw his money around to every homeless man on the street, feeling it was the right thing to do; except one time he did that and he got to the stadium and realized he didn’t have enough money for the Bud Light tall boy he always got during the third inning. And in him he felt an unyielding rise of contempt for the himself of only hours ago, that he was something and now is something and that they aren’t the same somethings. But that the change was Barmecidal and it was just him, this moneyless and beerless man in the bleachers. Man made in God’s image, yet some men are homeless and some are beerless, and there must be this big bearded guy miles and miles in the sky who doesn’t have a home and can’t even catch a buzz.

Be as advertised.

Be as thou wast wont to be.

A writer must find his own grain, way, bent. ...He aspires to create new and original works. His way is alone. If he succumbs to ideologies, he turns into a mouthpiece. He must hang on to his identity for dear life. In the end he must rely on his own judgment. It’s the only way to survive as a writer and an artist.

A young homosexual friend recently said, "It's no secret that you, that one, has such-and-such color hair, is yea high, weighs thus and so, and so on, but when you keep one part of yourself secret, that becomes the most important part of you." And that is true, I think; it may be the most important truth of all.

Because if every moment of a life is present in every other, so is every old self you've ever tried to outrun. And then how to know—the present self having always felt flimsy, somehow, compared to the one so acutely alive under the kitchen table—which you, specifically, is the real one?

Because Jesus paid it all, we are free from the need to do it all. Our identity, worth, and value, are not anchored in what we can accomplish but in what Jesus accomplished for us.

Because we are invited to be part of God's new creation now, we seek to embody the identity we have been given in Christ. . . . We engage in mission to establish friendships that lead to the formation of a new people in the world.

Be confident enough to show your true self to the world.

Because while I might've been convinced as a child that my life as a black woman somehow invalidated me as a human being, I'm grateful to say that that was some straight-up, country-fried bullshit! Black women gave birth to the planet. Every human being, regardless of race or creed, originated from the womb of a black woman. That's just science! Not only are we the crust and core of civilization, we are innovative. Brilliant. Beautiful... And yes, MAGIC, among many other adjectives. Black women happen to be the most educated group in America (so far), and every day, there are more and more of us being told we can't and defiantly showing the world that we can and we will. It took a while for me to unlearn the bad lessons my parents taught me about my existence by accident, as well as the bad lessons the media has been teaching me on purpose (that's another story entirely), but I'm glad I have learned. I'm even grateful for the bad lessons I was taught in the first place. As it turns out, I'm pretty stubborn, so teaching me that my life will be bad, fueled my ambition to have the best life possible. -- "Gal: A Hard Row to How" by Gadbourey Sidibe

Become Yourself

Before I can say I am, I was. Heraclitus and I, prophets of flux, know that the flux is composed of parts that imitate and repeat each other. Am or was, I am cumulative, too. I am everything I ever was, whatever you and Leah may think. I am much of what my parents and especially my grandparents were -- inherited stature, coloring, brains, bones (that part unfortunate), plus transmitted prejudices, culture, scruples, likings, moralities, and moral errors that I defend as if they were personal and not familial.

Before operating on a patient's brain, I realized, I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, and what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end. The cost of my dedication to succeed was high, and the ineluctable failures brought me nearly unbearable guilt. Those burdens are what make medicine holy and wholly impossible: in taking up another's cross, one must sometimes get crushed by the weight.

Be individual, break free from the flock to avoid the predictable midsummer haircut.

Behind every face lies a mask. Behind it lies another onion layer of mask. If you peel the skins, you may cry.

Behind every mask there is a face, and behind that a story.