Identity Quotes

I had brought from Paris the national prejudice against Italian music, but I had also received from nature that acute sensibility against which prejudices are powerless. I soon contracted the passion it inspires in all those born to understand it.

~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I realised with a prickle of discomfort why he bothered me: it was not so much that I resented the hearty backslapping bonhomie of English upper-class gentlemen, for I could tolerate it well enough in Sidney on his own. It was the way Sidney fell so easily into this strutting group of young men, where I could not, and the fear that he might in some ways prefer their company to mine. Once again, I felt that peculiar stab of loneliness that only an exile truly knows: the sense that I did not belong, and never would again.

~ S.j. Parris

Since the end of the postwar economic boom, certain strategies have been intensified to stimulate consumption, especially strategies aimed at American youth that project sexual activity as instant fulfillment and violence as the locus of machismo identity. This market activity has contributed greatly to the disorientation and confusion of American youth, and those with less education and fewer opportunities bear the brunt of this cultural chaos.

~ Cornel West

I had only some dim and unformed sense, a sense which struck me now and then, and which I could not explain coherently, that for some years the South and particularly the Gulf Coast had been for America what people were still saying California was, and what California seemed to me not to be: the future, the secret source of malevolent and benevolent energy, the psychic center.

~ Joan Didion

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

~ Dashanne Stokes

Accepted social gender roles and expectations are so entrenched in our culture that most people cannot imagine any other way. As a result, individuals fitting neatly into these expectations rarely if ever question what gender really means. They have never had to, because the system has worked for them.

~ Nicki Petrikowski

Asked what would be his idea of Heaven, one statesman in 1897 said it would be to receive a flow of telegrams alternating news of a British victory by sea and a British victory by land.

~ Barbara W. Tuchman

The tribal pull of patriotism could have no better testimony.

~ Barbara W. Tuchman

We look at the Ark of the Covenant and remember who we are.

~ Geraldine Brooks

This is not an issue of geography. He IS of two worlds wherever he goes.

~ Ron Suskind

Culture is taking whatever background you come from and either running with it or running from it.

~ Imani Nettles

Culture is taking the background you come from and either running with it or running from it.

~ Imani Nettles

Anthropologist Gary Weaver suggested looking at culture as a kind of iceberg: one portion is clearly visible above the surface of the water, while the much larger chunk of ice is hidden below. The part above the water can be considered surface culture––what we can physically see or hear, including behavior, words, customs, language, and traditions. Underneath the water, invisible to all, is the deep culture. This place includes our beliefs, values, assumptions, worldview, and thought processes.

~ David C. Pollock

When we think of the word culture, obvious representations such as how to dress, eat, speak, and act like those around us come to mind. But learning culture is more than learning conformity to external patterns of behavior. Culture is also a system of shared concepts, beliefs, and values. It is the framework from which we interpret and make sense of life and the world around us.

~ David C. Pollock

With the evolution of Us came the evolution of Them.The original Them was anyone who wasn’t blood related — Them was pretty much everyone. Over time, as the number of people in Us got bigger, Them got smaller. Them now might mean anyone in any other country. This is a common Them in America, and a Them that only (light use of this word) consists of 95% of the world. Another common Them in America is anyone who isn’t Christian, which is a measly 68% of the world, or roughly 4.8 Billion Thems.In a relatively short amount of time, Us went from being a fraction of a percent of humanity and Them the rest, to some people experiencing an Us of more than two billion other people, far more than were ever alive at the onset of Us and Them.

~ Sam Killermann

The construction of a new body of knowledge always bears direct connection to the ideology in which it operates. Historical insights that diverge from the narrative laid down at the inception of the nation can be accepted only when consternation about their implications is abated. This can happen when the current collective identity begins to be taken for granted and ceases to be something anxiously and nostalgically clings to a mythical past, when identity becomes the basis for living and not its purpose - that is when historiographic change can take place.

~ Shlomo Sand

Americans tend to use nation as a synonym for country. But political scientists and historians, as well as many Europeans, tend to use the term for a much more specific phenomenon: a group of people who feel they belong together, whether they have a country of their own or not.

~ Robert Lane Greene

My culture is my identity and personality. It gives me spiritual, intellectual and Emotional distinction from others, and I am proud of it.

~ M.f. Moonzajer

When we finally achieve the full right of participation in American life, what we make of it will depend upon our sense of cultural values, and our creative use of freedom, not upon our racial identification. I see no reason why the heritage of world culture—which represents a continuum—should be confused with the notion of race. Japan erected a highly efficient modern technology upon a religious culture which viewed the Emperor as a god. The Germany which produced Beethoven and Hegel and Mann turned its science and technology to the monstrous task of genocide; one hopes that when what are known as the “Negro” societies are in full possession of the world’s knowledge and in control of their destinies, they will bring to an end all those savageries which for centuries have been committed in the name of race. From what we are now witnessing in certain parts of the world today, however, there is no guarantee that simply being non-white offers any guarantee of this. The demands of state policy are apt to be more influential than morality. I would like to see a qualified Negro as President of the United States. But I suspect that even if this were today possible, the necessities of the office would shape his actions far more than his racial identity.

~ Ralph Ellison

Anger is what makes our struggle visible, and our struggle is what exposes they hypocrisy of a nation that fashions itself a moral leader. To rise against the narrative and expose the lie gives opportunity to those whose identity depends on the lie to question and, hopefully, change.

~ Mychal Denzel Smith

Brother, if any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him. For you are worse than he thinks you to be. If he charges you falsely on some point, yet be satisfied, for if he knew you better he might change the accusation and you would be no gainer by the correction.If you have your moral portrait painted and it is ugly, be satisfied. For it only needs a few blacker touches and it would be still nearer the truth. “I will be base in my own sight.” This was well said. Perhaps if David had carried it out more fully and had been rendered watchful thereby, it might have saved him from his great fall. A sense of electing love will render you base in your own sight.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The smoke shifted direction and I breathed in. Breathed out. On the inhale I was angry. On the exhale…there it was again. Fear. The fear made me angry and the anger made me afraid and I wasn’t sure who he was anymore. Or who I was.

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

It’s the sensation that gives rise to ego or personal identity. All the external and internal experiences of life are experienced only with the sensation.

~ Roshan Sharma

Maybe to feel superior in struggle was sensed, When people were aware to fight for identity.

~ Marieta Maglas Near Kin

Maybe to feel superior in struggle was sensed, When people were aware to fight for identity.'-Terzanelle for Octavia Estelle Butler, poem by Marieta Maglas

~ Marieta Maglas

Maybe to feel superior in struggle was sensed, When people were aware to fight for identity.”- Near Kin

~ Marieta Maglas

Besides, who is to say that the feelings he writes in his diary are his true feelings? Who is to say that at each moment while the pen moves he is truly himself? At one moment he might truly be himself, at another he might simply be making things up. How can one know for sure? Why should he even want to know for sure?

~ J.m. Coetzee

Shouldn't we rather recognize that each person is a sort of unconscious anthology of all epochs of man, and that he may at times be moving simultaneously among different epochs?

~ Nick Joaquín

Through Christ we have a new identity--we should not be speaking to our old man, the sinner, and giving him his identity back.

~ Eric Samuel Timm

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

~ Heraclitus

Who can give a man this, his own name?

~ George Macdonald

Negative self-talk and negative affirmation can keep you anchored in old thought patterns and identities.

~ Bryant Mcgill

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.

~ Sam Smith

I want to make the choice that gives an accurate impression of who I am; and who I am is someone who wants to be ethical, evolved, yet not at all an oil pan for the machinations of the morally corrupt.

~ Kelli Jae Baeli

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.

~ Timothy J. Keller

Our sense of self, formulated in large part by the untold number of cross-related connections that we make with our physical, social, and family environments, is reliant upon fitting into our social fabric. The educational environment, family relationships, peer groups, books, television, films, music, along with an assortment of other cultural events shape our emergent persona. Our successes and failures interacting in the world leave their collective imprint upon the wet clay of our forming brains. We are sentimental creatures who cling to past memories. We are inquisitive critters who venture forth from our protective dens to explore new territory. We are perceptive organisms equipped with five basic senses. We are sentient beings who can consciously organize our sense impressions into guiding ideas and useful principles. Our survival responses form a central cord of our emotions. We are receptive, compassionate beings that respond with both body and mind to global stimuli.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

But some memories are more important than others,' she says. 'Because some memories belong to more than just one other person...Some memories tell us about who we are. They need to be kept safe so that things can change for all of us

~ Anna Smaill

So I found myself telling my own stories. It was strange: as I did it I realised how much we get shaped by our stories. It's like the stories of our lives make us the people we are. If someone had no stories, they wouldn't be human, wouldn't exist. And if my stories had been different I wouldn't be the person I am.

~ John Marsden

I have argued that when we encounter other humans we experience them first as persons, and cannot help but do so. This means that in order to see a human person as an animal or organism we must abstract from the totality of our experience. My suggestion is that we take this fact seriously in understanding the ontology of everyday objects. According to this proposal a “human animal” or “human organism” is not a thing in its own right, but rather a particular perspective we take on ourselves and our lives, one that attends only to our purely biological functions.

~ Marya Schechtman

True, beneath the human façade, I was an interloper, an alien whose ship had crashed beyond hope of repair in the backwoods of Southern Appalachia—but at least I’d learned to walk and talk enough like the locals to be rejected as one of their own.

~ Sol Luckman