Identity Quotes - Page 19

• The member of a primitive clan might express his identity in the formula "I am we"; he cannot yet conceive of himself as an "individual," existing apart from his group.

  Erich Fromm

  Responsibility, Independence, Groups

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Sane Society Ils 252”, p.61, Routledge

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• By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.

  Alain de Botton

  Self, Imagination, Prejudice

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, 2000.

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• To be free means to be lacking in constitutive identity...

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Mean, Lacking

  "History as a System". Book by Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1962.

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• Your fate is to be yourself, both punishment and crime.

  Jane Hirshfield

  Being Yourself, Fate, Punishment

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• I have been moving around all my life. Going to different schools, living in different houses, shedding old roles, assuming new ones. This way of life is as natural to me as staying in one place is for other people. I do variations on the theme. I return to places where I used to be. I find my old personas. I try them on. If they still fit, I wear them out to a party or a show. If they begin to restrict my movements, I take them off. I am a human being, capable of mimicking anything I see or remember or can imagine.

  Ellen Gilchrist

  Moving, Party, School

  Ellen Gilchrist (2013). “Falling Through Space”, p.27, Open Road Media

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• My approach to acting now is so different -- I'm fearless because I have nothing to lose. Before [children] my identity was wrapped up in every decision -- now, I don't care.

  Jessica Alba

  Children, Decision, Fearless

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• Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act... a "doing" rather than a "being". There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results. If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.

  Judith Butler

  Sex, Character, Expression

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• Becoming an entrepreneur was the furthest thing from my mind. I actually had an identity crisis when I realized I had become one.

  Anne Taintor

  Entrepreneur, Mind, Becoming

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• Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new tool to continue the fight against Israel and for Arab unity.

  Zuheir Mohsen

  Fighting, Israel, Unity

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• Sometimes we say we want an end to hate or racism or sexism. But we all participate in keeping these structures alive. If everyone decided to relinquish the past what would happen to people who feel that there hasn't been proper atonement made to them? And what happens to the person who feels that the constant atonement is their identity?

  Chris Abani

  Hate, Past, People

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• The theme of Death is to Poetry what Mistaken Identity is to Drama.

  Dannie Abse

  Drama, Theme, Mistaken

  1984 Journa lentry,Feb,collected in Journals from the Ant-Heap (1986).

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• Both art and the artist lack identity and define themselves only through their encounter with each other.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Artist, Encounters

  "Art & Other Serious Matters" by Harold Rosenberg, University of Chicago Press, (p. 155), 1985.

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• There are Muslims of all kinds. The idea of closing them into a single identity is wrong.

  Amartya Sen

  Ideas, Kind, Closing

  "Think a West Tolerant Intolerance Against Muslims Is Wrong and Dangerous". Interview with Mario Baudino, La Stampa, January 30, 2003.

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• To know another's heart, you must first know your own.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Heart, Firsts, Knows

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2001). “Narcissus in Chains: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.213, Penguin

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• The myth of Canada, its hidden story, is of a contemplative country, a place of inwardness, where people can question the idea of nationhood and ponder what values we wish to see expressed and achieved, and what solitudes of identity and reverie we wish to preserve.

  B. W. Powe

  Country, Ideas, People

  "Towards a Canada of Light". Book by Bruce W. Powe, 2006.

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• There is a powerful desire by majorities to assert a religious identity for the country.

  Jack Balkin

  Country, Religious, Powerful

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• People of faith should not invoke the power of the state to decide what everyone can believe or think or read or do. In such cases, like abortion or prayer or prohibition or sexual identity, the proper role of religion is to appeal to the free conscience of each person, not the coercive rule of secular law.

  Edward Kennedy

  Prayer, Believe, Thinking

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• It would be wrong to interpret the growth of British national consciousness in this period in terms of a new cultural and political uniformity being resolutely imposed on the peripheries of the island by its centre. For many poorer and less literate Britons, Scotland, Wales and England remained more potent rallying calls than Great Britain, except in times of danger from abroad. And even among the politically educated, it was common to think in terms of dual nationalities, not a single national identity.

  Linda Colley

  Thinking, Islands, Scotland

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• Once I started writing all the time and interacting with poets, I made a conscious decision to identify myself as a poet. It's funny how much a single word can provide focus and direction. As soon as I claimed that identity, I started clearing more and more space for poetry in my life and applying poetic tools to other areas of my life. The world became a different place, and I witnessed it through different kinds of eyes.

  Tracy K. Smith

  Eye, Writing, Space

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• To experience thinking outside the brain is to enter a world of instantaneous connections that make ordinary thinking (i.e those aspects limited by the physical brain and the speed of light_ seem like some hopelessly sleepy and plodding event. Our truest, deepest self is completely free. It is not crippled or compromised by past actions or concerned with identity or status. It comprehends that it has no need to fear the earthly world, and therefore, it has no need to build itself up through fame or wealth or conquest.

  Eben Alexander

  Past, Thinking, Self

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• In the bureaucracy, the identity of state interest and particular private aim is established in such a way that the state interest becomes a particular private aim over against other private aims.

  Karl Marx

  Way, States, Bureaucracy

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1975). “Collected works”

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• Just as our fingerprints are one-of-a-kind, so is our identity. Each of us is a once-only articulation of what humans can be. We are rare, unmatched, mysterious. This is why the quality of openness is so crucial to our self-discovery. We cannot know ourselves by who we think we are, who others take us to be, or what our driver's license may say. We are fields of potential, some now actualized, most not yet.

  David Richo

  Thinking, Discovery, Self

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• I got Twitter identity theft.

  Elizabeth Banks

  Identity Theft, Theft

  "Q&A: Elizabeth Banks Is Every Woman You Know". Interview with Stephen Garrett, www.esquire.com. August 23, 2011.

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• Daily life is a comprimised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes. ...Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism, and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence.

  E. O. Wilson

  Self, Class, Role Playing

  "On Human Nature". Book by E. O. Wilson, 1978.

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• By practice and conviction formed, With ancient stubbornness ingrained, Although her body clung and swarmed, My own identity remained.

  Yvor Winters

  Practice, Body, Ancient

  Yvor Winters (1978). “The collected poems of Yvor Winters”, Swallow Pr

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