Identity Quotes

We are not defined by the family into which we are born, but the one we choose and create. We are not born, we become.

~ Tori Spelling

It’s worth noting my family doesn’t use the word step regarding anyone who’s married into our family. Jerry isn’t, nor has he ever been, my step-dad. His mom isn’t my step grandma: neither are my aunts, uncles, or cousins. While there was never a discussion regarding how we categorize or title our family, we all just understood that for us, we are all simply family.

~ Natalie Perry

For those of us who are told our families are wrong, we can question more strongly what we believe is right.

~ Natalie Perry

What makes a family is neither the absence of tragedy nor the ability to hide from misfortune, but the courage to overcome it and, from that broken past, write a new beginning.

~ Steve Pemberton

What tethers me to my parents is the unspoken dialogue we share about how much of my character is built on the connection I feel to the world they were raised in but that I've only experienced through photos, visits, food. It's not mine and yet, I get it. First-generation kids, I've always thought, are the personification of déjà vu.

~ Durga Chew-Bose

Van Uoc felt the stab of a sad truth: she and her mother would never be as close as her mother and grandmother had been.Her mother got up, stretched her tidy, graceful frame and headed for the kitchen. Van Uoc wanted to be able to offer her some comfort, but what could she say? Her mother was right. The two of them represented an irreconcilable cultural split. Distance between them was inevitable.

~ Fiona Wood

She started to speak, but then stopped. Anything she could think of to say seemed a mistake. In fact, speech in general seemed a mistake. It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work. from Back When We Were Grownups.

~ Anne Tyler

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.

~ Milan Kundera

Your family's never in your past. You carry it around with you everywhere.

~ M.l. Stedman

A live-in domestic worker: You are never sure that your soul is your own except when you are out of the house.

~ H.w. Brands

Genealogy itself is something of a privilege, coming far more easily to those of us for whom enslavement, conquest, and dispossession of our land has not been our lot.

~ Tim Wise

The neural basis for the self, as I see it, resides with the continuous reactivation of at least two sets of representations. One set concerns representations of key events in an individual's autobiography, on the basis of which a notion of identity can be reconstructed repeatedly, by partial activation in topologically organized sensory maps. ... In brief, the endless reactivation of updated images about our identity (a combination of memories of the past and of the planned future) constitutes a sizable part of the state of self as I understand it.The second set of representations underlying the neural self consists of the primordial representations of an individual's body ... Of necessity, this encompasses background body states and emotional states. The collective representation of the body constitute the basis for a concept of self, much as a collection of representations of shape, size, color, texture, and taste can constitute the basis for the concept of orange.

~ António R. Damásio

Mind makes a man of God.

~ Emmanuel Diogu

If we make a fly-on-the-wall review of our history and connect the significant scenarios from our memory, we can develop a comprehensive pattern of our identity that throws a whirl of light on the secreted framework of our life. (Labyrinth of the mind)

~ Erik Pevernagie

I was a slave to my own darkness, believing in my false created, thought-identified identity so much that it forged what felt like a wasteland of a reality.

~ Andrew Kendall

It has the elegance of a sword The might of a shield,How you chose to fight or yieldIts your to wield.Identify your mind.Poem: The Beautiful Mindin ‘Chameleon Lights

~ Ayushman Jamwal

The metaphysical poetry of our innovative life springs from the aesthetic, scenic, and systematic processes of inventiveness, the creative impulse of an active mind generating aesthetical intuition.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

We use the mind to create ourselves. Stuck amid the inevitable gaps between the mint of imagination and the postholes of actuality, we stutter step through the stratum of objective and subjective reality. We constantly amend our internal mental maps. Each day we awaken from the nighttime dream world with a revised identity of ourselves.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I think I think, therefore I think I probably am.

~ David F. Porteous

the mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed--your self. You must believe in your own powers.

~ Haruki Murakami

I am living a simple life with a complicated mind and I have yet to find a state of mind where I feel safe with who I am, where I am, with what I do.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

You are more that the identity your mind creates.

~ Steven Redhead

You are not your thoughts!! This simple yet powerful statement can greatly change the quality of your life.

~ Dawn Gluskin

Your life is always a perfect reflection of your state of heart and mind, and of your truest identity.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Thinking is good for your mind, but too much thinking leads to distraction.

~ Ehabib

No two human beings are alike; it's a question of identity. And what is identity? The cognitive system arisin' from the aggregate memories of that individual's past experiences. The layman's word for this is the mind. Not two human beings have the same mind. At the same time, human beings have almost no grasp of their own cognitive systems. I don't, you don't, nobody does. All we know—or think we know—is but a fraction of the whole cake. A mere tip of the icing.

~ Haruki Murakami

The mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed—your self.

~ Haruki Murakami

The act of claiming an identity can be transformational. It can provide healing and empowerment. It can weld solidarity within a community. And, perhaps most importantly, it can diminish power from an oppressor, a dominant group.

~ Simon Tam

Your identity depends on your heart's ability to excuse not on the power or the money you own.

~ Bharath Mamidoju

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

~ Sunday Adelaja

The world will lose something if you do not find yourself, if you do not answer the question “Who am I

~ Sunday Adelaja

Identifying someone by his, or her, outward appearance is often the first and most common error in the world

~ Sunday Adelaja

We have a natural and supernatural identity. Our spirituality should be relevant to daily life; our calling is to influence the world through right living, the Truth and the power of God.

~ E.n. Supen

You empower ignorance if you as teacher hide yourself among the students because you know less and give less... Don’t hide your identity, make it a reality!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

The world put's too much emphasis on what a person does in terms of monetary value and social status as opposed to who they are. If I was to ask you if you would be loved for who you are or what you do (eg. your occupation), I would guess that you would say who you are. Things are the wrong way around unless you follow Jesus.God cares about who we are primarily, not what we do. It is our character and approach to life that he cares about. God wants us to choose him and put him first which ultimately means being a servant to him and others.

~ Tim Crawshaw

Racism and violence were non-existent in this world, When people were aware to fight for identity'- Terzanelle for Octavia Estelle Butler, Poem by Marieta Maglas

~ Marieta Maglas

Our identity in the world is like a wave from the Ocean.

~ Kishore Bansal

People love their causes they champion; they love their divisions and neatly packaged boxes of identity; for without them, they would be forced to look within, find themselves, set aside pettiness and face reality (that's quite frightening to most). As a result, they are like a lost ship at sea, forced to submit to the waves of society.

~ Dara Reidyr

I am a worried person with a stressed out soul, living a simple life with no capital.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

I am constantly torn between the will to be seen and still hidden so god damn well, a contradiction I never figured out.

~ Charlotte Eriksson