Best 2380 quotes in «identity quotes» category

If a woman is interested in her own struggle into identity and power, then she will be interested in other women. The lives of these, and other women, show me what a woman can do even without formal power, education, or rights, in a world dominated by men. They are inspirational examples of the strength of the female spirit.

I feel separated and cut off from the world around me, but occasionally I've felt that it was really a part of me, and I hope I'll have that feeling again, and that next time it won't go away. That's a dim, misty outline of the story that's told so often, of how man once lived in a golden age or a garden of Eden or the Hesperides ... how that world was lost, and how we some day may be able to get it back again. ... This story of the loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature.

I feel very strongly that all Japanese at that time had the idea drilled into them of 1999 being the end of the world. Aum renunciates have already accepted, inside themselves, the end of the world, because when they become a renunciate, they discard themselves totally, thereby abandoning the world. In other words, Aum is a collection of people who have accepted the end. People who continue to hold out hope for the near future still have an attachment to the world. If you have attachments, you will not discard your Self, but for Renunciates it's as if they've leaped right off the cliff. And taking a giant leap like that feels good. They lose something - but gain something in return.

I felt good that, although there was no future, there would always be a past.

I felt myself a new species of child. Not a boy (most assuredly) but neither a (mere) girl. That skirt-bound race perpetually moving about serving tea had nothing to do with me. I had such high hopes, you see. The boundaries of the world seemed vast. I would visit Rome, Paris, Constantinople. Underground cafés presented in my mind where, crushed against wet walls, a (handsome, generous) friend and I sat discussing—many things. Deep things, new ideas. Strange green lights shone in the streets, the sea lapped nearby against greasy tilted moorings; there was trouble afoot, a revolution, into which my friend and I must— Well, as is often the case, my hopes were…not realized.

I felt like no one was really looking out for me, that I was marginal and incidental. I compensated by being spongelike, impressionable, and available to whatever and whoever provided the most comfort, the most sense of belonging. I was learning two sets of skills simultaneously: adaptation - linguistic and aesthetic - in order to fit in, but also, how to survive on my own.

If I couldn't find the trail before dark, I could wake tomorrow disoriented and desperate, without having even made any new miles; my loss of the PCT should have distressed me, but a new instinct led me forward. In this moment of despair I was refusing to stop fighting. I asked the mountains for some guidance, the strength to get myself out of here, and pulled wild power from within myself I'd never known I'd had. I was no longer following a trail. I was learning to follow myself.

If I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you, then I am I and you are you. But if I am I because you are you and you are you because I am I, then I am not I and you are not you!

If I had been born in America, I'd be called Korean-American and would have all the rights accorded to an American citizen. I'd be treated like I was human. But this country is different. If I become a model person, more so than any Japanese, I still wouldn't be treated like a proper human as long as I have Korean citizenship. The way a sumo wrestler can't become a stable master while he still has foreign citizenship. Assimilation or exclusion. There are only two choices in this country.

I figure the more people think I'm just mildly weird, the less likely they are to know how weird I really am.

I finally understood what my grandmother meant. If I wasn't comfortable with myself, I would never be comfortable.

I find it really fascinating that while in an attempt to look beautiful we tend to go for what's easily acceptable. But when it comes to portraits, it is only our facial flaws that make that picture worth its while, setting it apart. Isn't it amazing to find that beauty is something that makes us alike? While our flaws are the real contributors to our uniqueness.

If it is true, as God says, that we are as we think, we risk becoming what we most fear if our fear is stronger than our love.

If "Manners maketh man," as someone said Then he's the hero of the day It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile Be yourself, no matter what they say." (Englishman in New York)

If mistakes determine our worth, then we're all worthless.Thank God that's not the case.

If Mozart had been born a Kalahari Bushman, he’d have been known as the best drummer in his family.

If only you could see the greatness in yourself, you wouldn't envy the greatness in others.

If one word can mean so many things at the same time then I don't see why I can't.

If originality is a “sense of novelty and freshness” then, in the act of constructing ourselves, originality is not the goal. We construct a self-portrait, relying on existing objects – books, quotes from authors and artists, images, art – that we are more than happy to show off to others for them to use as masturbation material or for the material by which they align themselves. This is the new action painting – the curational archive. The referential self portrait. The portrait of any other artist could be readily used to explain yourself, just reblog it and caption it with “same.” The past consistently becomes the present, not through linear time, but through the constant reconstruction and relabeling of it.

If [Patricia Highsmith] saw an acquaintance walking down the sidewalk she would deliberately cross over so as to avoid them. When she came in contact with people, she realised she split herself into many different, false, identities, but, because she loathed lying and deceit, she chose to absent herself completely rather than go through such a charade. Highsmith interpreted this characteristic as an example of 'the eternal hypocrisy in me', rather her mental shape-shifting had its source in her quite extraordinary ability to empathise. Her imaginative capacity to subsume her own identity, while taking on the qualities of those around her - her negative capability, if you like - was so powerful that she said she often felt like her inner visions were far more real than the outside world. She aligned herself with the mad and the miserable, 'the insane man who feels himself one with all mankind, all life, because in losing his mind, he has lost his ego, his self-ness', yet realised that such a state inspired her fiction. Her ambition, she said, was to write about the underlying sickness of this 'daedal planet' and capture the essence of the human condition: eternal disappointment.

If someone called me fat, that affects me way more than someone calling me a f----t. I think just because I've accepted that, if someone calls me a f----t, it's like, I am gay and I'm proud to be gay so there's no issues there. If something calls you fat, that's something I want to change.

If someone is telling a lie, whether it's about you or anything else, you've got every right to call it a lie. You don't have to believe in or repeat any lies that you've been told. And just because the president of the United States mispronounces nuclear, it doesn't mean you have to. Claiming your own voice and language can be your best line of defence against any bully culture and any government that practices a politic of domination and exclusion. You are entitled to live bully-free and in a healthier political climate than that. It's possible.

If serious reading dwindles to near nothingness, it will probably mean that the thing we’re talking about when we use the word “identity” has reached an end.

If she looked further than the wedding, it was to see marriage as the beginning of individual existence, this skirmish from which one one's spurs, from which one set out on the true quests of life.

If we are not careful to understand who we are, which is transcendent above our roles, above our duties, then we are at risk of collapse when something happens to change our roles and to change our duties.

If we consider this official or elite multiculturalism as an ideological state apparatus we can see it as a device for constructing and ascribing political subjectivities and agencies for those who are seen as legitimate and full citizens and others who are peripheral to this in many senses. There is in this process an element of racialized ethnicization, which whitens North Americans of European origins and blackens or darkens their 'others' by the same stroke. This is integral to Canadian class and cultural formation and distribution of political entitlement. The old and established colonial/racist discourses of tradition and modernity, civilization and savagery, are the conceptual devices of the construction and ascription of these racialized ethnicities. It is through these 'conceptual practices of power' (Smith, 1990) that South Asians living in Canada, for example, can be reified as hindu or muslim, in short as religious identities.....We need to repeat that there is nothing natural or primordial about cultural identities - religious or otherwise - and their projection as political agencies. In this multiculturalism serves as a collection of cultural categories for ruling or administering, claiming their representational status as direct emanations of social ontologies. This allows multiculturalism to serve as an ideology, both in the sense of a body of content, claiming that 'we' or 'they' are this or that kind of cultural identities, as well as an epistemological device for occluding the organization of the social....an interpellating device which segments the nation's cultural and political space as well as its labour market into ethnic communities....Defined thus, third world or non-white peoples living in Canada become organized into competitive entities with respect to each other. They are perceived to have no commonality, except that they are seen as, or self-appellate as, being essentially religious, traditional or pre-modern, and thus civilizationally backward. This type of conceptualization of political and social subjectivity or agency allows for no cross-border affiliation or formation, as for example does the concept of class.

If we get our very identity, our sense of worth, from our political position, then politics is not really about, it is about US. Through our cause we are getting a self, our worth. That means we MUST despise and demonize the opposition. If we get our identity from our ethnicity or socioeconomic status, then we HAVE to feel superior to those of other classes and races. If you are profoundly proud of being an open-minded, tolerant soul, you will be extremely indignant toward people you think are bigots. If you are a very moral person, you will feel superior to people you think are licentious. And so on.

If we don’t know who we are, we conceal our true selves and bear their brand

If we are not aware of who we are, how will we know where we are going or how we should get there

If we don’t know who we are, we conceal our true selves and wear the image of others

[I]f we feel that creation does not express purpose, it is impossible to find an authorization for purpose in our own lives.

If we really want to know, who we are and recognize our identity, we have to find out the identity of the others. By making friends with the others, we are able to make friends with ourselves. At that moment, we can sense how everything falls into place. ( “ Steps in the unknown" )

If you are going to accept anything, accept who you are.

...If you are never to see yourself depicted... Not in story nor song nor poem nor painting nor prose... No shred of a tale by some distant kindred soul who saw and knew and felt then as you do now, and else another who loved and bore witness... Never see yourself except as crude caricature, mythical beast, or Magdalene penitent... You believe no other like you ever existed. You begin to wonder if you even exist at all. Unquiet women, defiant women--we live invisible lives, and if we are seen and seen by strangers, we are reduced to monsters. Vampires, who have no reflection in a looking glass. Mermaids, who die and become sea foam, blown away by the wind. We will take up and take back the tools to tell our stories as our own. Civilizations may rise and fall and rewrite the history of the dead, as so often they do. But we were here... and we lived, and loved, and mattered.

If you can't see past my name, you can't see me.

If you are surrounded by people who agree with you, you do not have to do much thinking. If you are surrounded by people who identify themselves the same way you do, you do not have to work at constructing a unique identity. If you are surrounded by people who behave the same way you do, you do not have to question your own choices.

If you become obsessed with someone else, you lose yourself.

If you can accept the indescribable nature of your true identity, you unveil the mystery of life.

If you don’t find yourself and purpose, the world will be worse for it

If you don’t have your own identity, you will adopt the brand of another

If you don’t know who you are, you will be someone else

If you don't script your own way once and for all, your story will be written by someone else, and your actions will be guided by other people's dreams of who you should be rather than by the bright jagged thing you really are.

If you don't read books, and if you don't get consumed by the physical and moral life of men and women in fiction and history, too many facets of yourself may never come into being.

If you ever find yourself on a path that just doesn't feel safe anymore, you have every right to stop the car. Get out - change your shoes and start walking.

If you enjoy sex or explore aspects of your sexual identity using technology, that experience should belong to you. Only you should get to decide whether it was a good or bad thing to do.

If you go to the craft market you will see them everywhere. They represent the mix of cultures and races here in the Dominican Republic, that are the result of centuries of international commerce, colonization, conquest, and the slave trade. The facelessness means that there is no 'typical' Dominican woman.

If you manage to live long enough, most of your greatest fears become fond memories to look back on.

...if you live for people's acceptance, you'll die from their rejection.

If you lose your integrity, you will also lose your identity, your sensitivity and your dignity. Integrity is honesty, modesty and security in all kinds of weather. It should be our priority!

If your nationality is lost, nothing is lost – if your religion is lost, nothing is lost – if your ethnicity is lost, nothing is lost – but if your character is lost, then you are more lost than Donald Trump.