quotations about identity
Sex ... or lack thereof ... is at the center of everyone's identity, and once you've cracked someone's desires, you understand them in full.
ARIANNE COHEN
Marie Claire Magazine, March 2008
What doesn't slumber under the shells of us all? One just needs courage to uncover it and be oneself.
CESARE PAVESE
The Beach
It is not a slight thing, gentlemen, to force a man to say what he is, or what he believes himself to be; for that supreme word of man, that single expression which he utters of and upon himself is decisive. It lays down the basis upon which all judgment of him is to be formed. From that moment all the acts of his life must correspond to the answer given by him.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
Jesus Christ: Conferences Delivered at Notre Dame in Paris
Whatever you are physically ... male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy--all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. Whatever the color, the shape, the design of the shade that conceals it, the flame inside the lamp remains the same. You are that flame.
CASSANDRA CLARE
Clockwork Angel
All we are not stares back at what we are.
W. H. AUDEN
"The Sea and the Mirror"
There was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world.
MARY OLIVER
"The Journey", Dream Work
Whatever the hell I am, I am Me.
TANITH LEE, Wolf Queen
Identity is a relation between our cognition of a thing, not between things themselves.
SIR. W. HAMILTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Any loss of identity prompts people to seek reassurance and rediscovery of themselves by testing, and even by violence. Today, the electric revolution, the wired planet, and the information environment involve everybody in everybody to the point of individual extinction.
MARSHALL MCLUHAN
letter to Clare Westcott, November 26, 1975
When established identities become outworn or unfinished ones threaten to remain incomplete, special crises compel men to wage holy wars, by the cruelest means, against those who seem to question or threaten their unsafe ideological bases.
ERIK ERIKSON
"The Problem of Ego Identity", Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
People remain what they are even if their faces fall apart.
BERTOLT BRECHT
In the Jungle of Cities
When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren't any other people there wouldn't be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
All the King's Men
We are reduced to asking others what we are. We never dare to ask ourselves.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Discourse on Inequality
I have a certain way of being in this world, and I shall not, I shall not be moved.
MAYA ANGELOU
Phenomenal Woman
People fear their hidden selves, afraid that they will burst out.
GREGORY BENFORD
Foundation's Fear
No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Blind Willow
Identical strictly means "one and the same;" and if it were tied down to its strictest usage, it would indeed follow very logically, as we have said already, that no such thing as personal identity is possible.
SAMUEL BUTLER
"Personal Identity", Essays on Life, Art and Science
What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook
The most exciting part of finding out who we are is discovering our own uniqueness, who we are outside the box, beyond the categories in a Psychology 101 textbook. In our inimitable singularity, there is an infinite range of possibility that cannot be tied to any one description of what it means to be human or healthy.
DAVID RICHO
interview, The Urban Muse