Identity Quotes - Page 27

• What is your trouble? Mistaken identity.

  Wei Wu Wei

  Trouble, Mistaken, Mistaken Identity

  "Ask the Awakened: the Negative Way". Book by Wei Wu Wei, 1963.

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• Be less about protecting any type of identity affiliated to a country or even ethnic background. Be more about the fact that we're here for a short time and Heaven is going to be a rainbow of people, multiculture, every generation.

  Max Lucado

  Country, People, Rainbow

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• 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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• Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Romantic, Famous Love, Best Love

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1989). “Conversations of German Refugees ; Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years, Or, The Renunciants”, p.296, Princeton University Press

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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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• The prerequisite of contrapuntal art, more conspicuous in the work of Bach than in that of any other composer, is an ability to conceive a priori of melodic identities which when transposed, inverted, made retrograde, or transformed rhythmically will yet exhibit, in conjunction with the original subject matter, some entirely new but completely harmonious profile.

  Glenn Gould

  Art, Matter, Profile

  "Song: 'So You Want To Write A Fugue'". 1997.

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• Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers. Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity. The stars threaded on that line were like events threaded on a narrative. Imagining the constellations did not of course change the stars, nor did it change the black emptiness that surrounds them. What it changed was the way people read the night sky.

  John Berger

  Stars, Night, Sky

  John Berger (2014). “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos”, p.8, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Radical changes of identity, happening suddenly and in very brief intervals of time, have proved more deadly and destructive of human values than wars fought with hardware weapons.

  Marshall McLuhan

  War, Weapons, Radical Change

  "Laws of Media: The New Science". Book by Marshall McLuhan, co-written with Eric McLuhan, p.97, 1988.

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• This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before.

  Ayn Rand

  Miracle, Use, Anthem

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Anthem”, p.46, Xist Publishing

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• Part of America's genius has always been its ability to absorb newcomers, to forge a national identity out of the disparate lot that arrived on our shores.

  Barack Obama

  America, Genius, Newcomers

  Barack Obama (2007). “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”, p.231, Canongate Books

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• Today, every principle of identity is affected by fashion, precisely because of its potential to revert all forms to non-origin and recurrence. Fashion is always retro, but always on the basis of the abolition of the passé (the past): the spectral death and resurrection of forms. Its proper actuality (its 'up-to-dateness', its 'relevance') is not a reference to the present, but an immediate and total recycling.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Fashion, Past, Principles

  Jean Baudrillard (1993). “Symbolic Exchange and Death”, p.88, SAGE

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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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• 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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• 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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• You cannot spend your life wanting to be someone else, snipping off pieces of yourself you don't like, and suddenly expect, upon reaching a goal, to be confident, self-accepting, rooted like an oak tree in your being.

  Geneen Roth

  Self, Goal, Tree

  Geneen Roth (1997). “Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment”, p.147, Penguin

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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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• One of the many, many things I hate about war is how it trivializes the personal. The big themes, the broad sweep, the emergency measures, the national identity, all the things that a particular kind of man with a particular kind of power urge adores, these are the things that become important. War gives the lie to the personal, drowns it in meetings, alarms, sacrifices. The personal is only allowed to return as death.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Lying, Hate, War

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• We need to go inward instead of outward, and learn to trust our own inner guide, preserving our identity and finding the answers from within.

  Jane Fulton Alt

  Individuality, Needs, Inward

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• All of us need an identity which unites us with our neighbours, our countrymen, those people who are subject to the same rules and the same laws as us, those people with whom we might one day have to fight side by side to protect our inheritance, those people with whom we will suffer when attacked, those people whose destinies are in some way tied up with our own.

  Roger Scruton

  Fighting, Destiny, Law

  "Rivers of Blood". BBC Documentary, March 08, 2008.

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• Subjects who reciprocally recognize each other as such, must consider each other as identical, insofar as they both take up the position of subject; they must at all times subsume themselves and the other under the same category. At the same time, the relation of reciprocity of recognition demands the non-identity of one and the other, both must also maintain their absolute difference, for to be a subject implies the claim of individuation.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Differences, Demand, Recognition

  "Sprachanalyse und Soziologie". Book by Rolf Wiggershaus, 1972.

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• We ought to know about our culinary past. Food and identity is terribly important ... I don't mean we should go out and eat historic dishes, but we should know what makes us different ... self-confident nations have that sense of where they come from.

  Tom Jaine

  Mean, Past, Self

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• Women's liberation and the male midlife crisis were the same search--for personal fulfillment, common values, mutual respect, love. But while women's liberation was thought of as promoting identity, the male midlife crisis was thought of as an identity crisis.

  Warren Farrell

  Males, Midlife, Common

  Warren Farrell (1994). “The myth of male power: why men are the disposable sex”

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• What is my identity ?" "Nothing," said the Master. "You mean that I am an emptiness and a void?" said the incredulous disciple. "Nothing that can be labeled." said the Master.

  Anthony de Mello

  Mean, Void, Emptiness

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• In the mirror of your paper you will discover your identity as an artist.

  Rex Brandt

  Artist, Mirrors, Over You

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• One is what one remembers: no more, no less.

  Jan Struther

  Self, Remember

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