Quotes About Identity

Why would one's identity be a matter of feelings? I think that that's a misuse of terms, philosophically. Identity is mind independent. It's something that is objective, regardless of how you feel. So, the term gender identity seems to me to be something of an oxymoron. It's not really about one's identity. It's rather a matter of one's self-perception or one's feelings about oneself.

I've realized that a lot of people come to me because of what's called identity. In the sense of "he's like me" - more like identification. Identity is one of those nonsense words: it's been used so much it doesn't mean anything. As individuals, we don't want to stay the same; identity means sameness, and we don't want to be the same, we want to keep changing, we want to grow, we want to become something else. We want to evolve. So when people come to me, it's about resonance - it goes back to that word.

In 1933-34, the Belgians conducted a census in order to issue ‘ethnic’ identity cards, which labelled every Rwandan as either Hutu (85%) of Tutsi (14%) or Twa (1%). The identity cards made it virtually impossible for Hutus to become Tutsis, and permitted the Belgians to perfect the administration of an apartheid system rooted in the myth of Tutsi superiority… Whatever Hutu and Tutsi identity may have stood for in the pre-colonial state no longer mattered; the Belgians had made ‘ethnicity’ the defining feature of Rwandan existence.

The gospel has brought a new identity in Christ that then allows our work to no longer be the source of our identity but the rightful expression of it.

I have this very kind of like heterodox idea of what an education is, what underpins identity. I don't think I'm very easily pigeon holed in any of those boxes, so I confront this. I have a staff full of young people who came up in a very different tradition and who feel very fired up about the big identity battles. I listen and I try to navigate them, but I don't find them mapping onto my life in a personal way which is, which is hard.

I received a phone call from my mother, and it was so complicated and involved, and it reminded me of just how it is in a family, and how it is in Mexico, and gossip, and all this stuff. And I thought, well, why can't a documentary be made about gossip? And in that way, I touch upon these other things - identity, cultural identity, and aesthetics.

It's like we're suffering from an identity crisis, and that identity is in our arts and the fact that we don't find it chief amongst our agendas to teach our kids who we are as a nation and the battles we've had on this ground and how they've been successfully resolved. We can't enjoy the fruits of the labor of our ancestors.

I feel like I spent so much time trying to understand my identity and my identity as an artist. But when all is said and done, at this age, I feel the most like I felt when I was 11. And all those talents I had when I was 11 and 12 - I'm letting them sort of happen again. I can't speak for men, but for women - we go back to a kind of pre-adolescent state when we were superfree and supercool.

It seems to me that Canadian sensibility has been profoundly disturbed, not so much by our famous problem of identity, important as that is, as by a series of paradoxes in what confronts that identity. It is less perplexed by the question "Who am I?" than by some such riddle as "Where is here?

Perception, after all, is not simply a matter of what you believe about yourself, it all encompasses what others think about you, and what has been thought of you historically. I say we can pay attention to those other dimensions of our identity - class, gender, sexual orientation, geographical region - while at the same time understanding how our historically produced racial identity continues to serve, or undercut us.

I never understood liberal Jews blaming Israel, you know, supporting Palestinians. I've never understood it, until I spoke once to a man named Norman Podhoretz, and he said to me, "Many of you refer to liberal Jews that way. They're not Jews. They are liberals. Liberalism is what is first and foremost in their identity. The fact that they are Jews is not paramount or prominent. It's secondary - and, in many cases, even tertiary - to their identity."

Since the main problem that American, the Afro- Americans have is a lack of cultural identity. It is necessary to teach [people] that they had some type of identity, culture, civilization before they were brought here.

I try to find the core values that are so fundamental that they transcend ethnic identity. That doesn't mean I run from it. I embrace African-American culture and I love it and embrace it, but it is a part of a human identity. So I'm always trying to make a larger human statement.

National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.

Identity is not negotiable. An identity you have achieved by agreement is always a prison.

Language is the expression of ideas, and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas they cannot retain an identity of language.

Identity is a very difficult thing in the theatre. As an actor said to me one day, 'What are we doing today?' when we were doing a workshop. And I said, 'Oh, just be yourself'. And he said to me, 'I don't know who that is, I'm an actor'. And I begin to realise in fact that we seek identity because we're told we should have one, but I wonder whether it's necessary.

Merely presenting a driver's license or other document based on a birth certificate is not enough for an accurate verification. Biometric verification of identity must be made and then a data base of those persons who have legal status must be checked.

One pits his wits against apparently inscrutable nature, wooing her with ardor but nature is blind justice who cannot recognize personal identity.

I think it's the responsibility of every human being, not just those who wear the identity of poet, activist, voter, religious person... it's the responsibility of every person. Our responsibility is to use our intelligence as clearly and coherently as we possibly can.

Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples.

For me, coming to a fashion house and bringing my love and respect to it - and, hopefully, earning the love and respect of the house - is the only way to do it. I think of it as my own house in that sense as well. So I like not working from a blank piece of paper. I like that there's something from the past, some kind of identity that I have to work with. There are these good ghosts around, these good energies that kind of reinforce what you do.

At some point, in order to gain his identity, the kid goes "I'm not my dad" or "I'm not my mom."

I am the excuse to explore your identity. To be exactly who you are and to feel unafraid. To not judge yourself, to not hate yourself.

Maybe my identity's been stolen. Or maybe I was sleep-shopping!

I was not a very popular kid in high school, and I had this idea that the way that I dressed would change how liked I was. It was that kind of Pygmalion story. I think, ultimately that's probably why I became interested in fashion, its transformative power, and how it can change your identity.

It is time for blacks to begin the shift from a wartime to a peacetime identity, from fighting for opportunity to the seizing of it.

But the building's identity resided in the ornament.

India shaped my mind, anchored my identity, influenced my beliefs, and made me who I am. ... India matters to me and I would like to matter to India.

But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example.

Berlin is still going through a transition since the Cold War - both in what used to be East and West Berlin. I can still sense the confusion and the struggle for identity there in the streets. There's a pulse to it.

I don't create blurs. Blurring is not the most important thing; nor is it an identity tag for my pictures.

For me fashion is an expression of art that is very closely related both to me and to my body. I see it as an expression of identity combined with desire, moods and a cultural setting.

Florida is a place of unparalleled diversity of backgrounds, experiences and vision. It makes our culture unique, but it can also make it difficult to define a common identity and create a sense of community that reaches beyond our neighborhoods to all corners of our state.

Looks can’t hide your true identity. It’s the eyes that give you away…the soul behind them. The intent. The Shadows.

...it's my hypothesis that the individual is not a pre-given entity which is seized on by the exercise of power. The individual, with his identity and characteristics, is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces.

I don't think of myself as a critic or teacher either, but simply - and at the obvious risk of disingenuousness - as someone who teaches, writes drama criticism (and other things) and feels that the American compulsion to take your identity from your profession, with its corollary of only one trade to a practitioner, may be a convenience to society but is burdensome and constricting to yourself.

I dont know if there is a personal identity. We all imagine that we are absolute individuals. But when we begin to look for where this individuality resides, its very difficult to find.

Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity.

Today the thing I find myself thinking about the most is our landscape...I think it's something a lot of us take for granted; for many of us Australia is just there but how many of us have really seen it, have seen Kakadu or Kings Canyon? I know I hope to at some stage, to see Uluru at sunset and the ancient art in the Abrakurrie caves. I think it's our landscape which defines our identity and it's what I'm most grateful for.

When faced with a challenge, happy families, like happy people, just add a new chapter to their life story that shows them overcoming the hardship. This skill is particularly important for children, whose identity tends to get locked in during adolescence.

Ah, the truth, what a thing it is! I sacrifice so much for it, with people: I forego, for truth's sake, discretion, loyalty, diplomacy, tact, polite manners, elegance, grace, poise, balance, good taste, conformity, image-role, fashionableness, polish, confidences, promises, ambition, consistency, identity, clarity, comprehensibleness, good will, hypocrisy, and lots of other things--amass sacrifice, at truth's altar. God! is truth worth it? I hope it is. It better be, in fact.

She wanted to be herself again, to recover all that she had been obliged to give up in half a century of servitude that had doubtless made her happy but which, once her husband was dead, did not leave her even the vestiges of her identity.

[A]n important new book. . . . Professor Akerlof and Rachel Kranton have invented Identity Economics.

I've never been disbarred, committed or convicted of moral turpitude, and the only time I was arrested, it was a case of mistaken identity...I didn't know the guy I hit was a cop.

[about being a father] I don't really remember what it was like before. Whatever I had going on, it was bullshit. It wasn't important. It's kind of a nice thing about being a dad. My identity is really about them now, and what I can do for them, so it sort of takes the pressure off of your own life. What am I going to do, who am I? Who cares, you've got to get your kids to school. So I like it that way.

Look at 4chan culture, which is the ultimate version of shedding your IRL [in real life] identity - you don't even keep a consistent screen name from thread to thread. That's very important to them, this belief in the possibility that what I do online is completely separate from who I really am.

When the identity is realized, I as swordsman see no opponent confronting me and threatening to strike me. I seem to transform myself into the opponent, and every movement he makes as well as every thought he conceives are felt as if they were my own and I intuitively...know when and how to strike him.