Quotes About Identity

The identity of just one thing, the "clash of civilization" view that you're a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Christian, I think that's such a limited way of seeing humanity, and schools have the opportunity to bring out the fact that we have hundreds of identities. We have our national identity. We have our cultural identity, linguistic identity, religious identity. Yes, cultural identity, professional identity, all kinds of ways.

I see fashion as a proclamation or manifestation of identity, so, as long as identities are important, fashion will continue to be important. The link between fashion and identity begins to get real interesting, however, in the case of people who don't fall clearly into a culturally-recognized identity.

I was just very into things that were the opposite of what other people liked. I didn't want to listen to music that I could find at a friend's house. My identity was really forged around that, and you know, eventually that kind of identity gets dismantled and fed to the vultures. But I was somehow on my own mission.

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 don't think that the "freedom movement" is a racist movement as such. But it's a virulent example of identity politics. "Whiteness" is part of the identity, but not the most important part.

There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results.

The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.

I think it's too easy to just say that there is a direct and necessary conflict between black identity and gay identity. I think it's more nuanced than that simply because I think black is a color and then people layer on top of it all kinds of socio-cultural elements.

[Grace] is given not to make us something other than ourselves but to make us radically ourselves. Grace is given not to implant in us a foreign wisdom but to make us alive to the wisdom that was born with us in our mother’s womb. Grace is given not to lead us into another identity but to reconnect us to the beauty of our deepest identity. And grace is given not that we might find some exterior source of strength but that we might be established again in the deep inner security of our being and in learning to lose ourselves in love for one another to truly find ourselves.

When I started playing solo 10 years ago, I had some ham-fisted idea about trying to subvert the "singer-songwriter" tag/genre, and I tried to obscure my identity into the identity of a collective or band or whatever. That's part of the reason that I used to play with backing tapes and why so much of my early stuff was so awash in tape hiss and echo noise.

Perhaps the deepest reason we are afraid of death is that we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity; but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our "biography", our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit card ... It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?

We can never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, every origin. Writing is that neuter, that composite, that obliquity into which our subject flees, the black-and-white where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.

There is less pressure on abandoning native communities: what for? There is nothing to be gained by it. On one hand, there are plenty tempting opportunities of experimenting with identities - being one kind of person today and a different the next day. On the other hand, there is little pressure to include the ethnic identity or religious identity into this mechanism, because now everybody is in a kind of Diaspora today.

To me, the most interesting part of 'True Blood' is that the entire crux of the show is based on identity and finding your true identity.

More platform-sensitive generations will make distinctions between online and in-person intimacy, whereas fourteen-year-olds have very nuanced online selves and might embody their virtual identity in the physical, analogue version of themselves. They have a much more pluralistic understanding of the self. I don't think we'd be here now in this amazing sexual and gender revolution without the online space where young people can see and share other versions of identity and sexuality.

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?

Being Nigerian is a strong part of my identity. Being American is a strong part of my identity. And there are important parts of who I am that really have nothing to do with my national connection.

Know whose you are and you'll know who you are. Walk in your authentic identity as determined by your Creator. And, before you try to live without instructions as to what your identity really is read the owner's manual daily; the Bible. It's the best advice anyone ever gave me. Read it and it will change your life for the better, forever.

For us, mind has nature for its premise, being nature's truth and for that reason its absolute prius. In this truth nature has vanished, and mind has resulted as the idea arrived at being-for-itself, the object of which, as well as the subject, is the concept. This identity is absolute negativity, for whereas in nature the concept has its perfect external objectivity, this its alienation has been superseded, and in this alienation the concept has become identical with itself. But it is this identity therefore, only in being a return out of nature.

We are using the neurons, our identity, to constantly maintain our identity. Whether you are awake, asleep, or dreaming, this process is carried on. But, it is wearing you out.That is why I say the tragedy that is facing mankind is not AIDS or cancer, but Alzthiemer's disease.

The Gringo, locked into the fiction of white superiority, seized complete political power, stripping Indians and Mexicans of their land while their feet were still rooted in it. Con el destierro y el exilo fuimos desuñados, destroncados, destripados - we were jerked out by the roots, truncated, disemboweled, dispossessed, and separated from our identity and our history.

In the second half of life, the questions become: 'Who, apart from the roles you play, are you? What does the soul ask of you? Do you have the wherewithal to shift course, to deconstruct your painfully achieved identity, risking failure, marginalization and loss of collective approval?' No small task.

The increasing tendency towards seeing people in terms of one dominant ‘identity’ (‘this is your duty as an American’, ‘you must commit these acts as a Muslim’, or ‘as a Chinese you should give priority to this national engagement’) is not only an imposition of an external and arbitrary priority, but also the denial of an important liberty of a person who can decide on their respective loyalties to different groups (to all of which he or she belongs).

We've organized human potential and have been better at using human potential better than any country on the face of the Earth. That's because we've recognized that our national creed, our national identity, is that it doesn't matter where you're from, it matters where you're going. You can come from hard circumstances and do great things. We've got to make that true for a whole variety of people who no longer feel that.

Politics is based on social identity, and so, again, there is going to be differences between rural and urban and between left and right.

Too often the result of affirmative action has been an artificial diversity that gives the appearance of parity between blacks and whites that has not yet been achieved in reality...Preferences tend to attack one form of discrimination with another...Affirmative action encourages a victim-focused identity, and sends the message that there is more power in our past suffering than in our present achievements.

You are not 'in the now;' you are the now. That is your essential identity-the only thing that never changes. Life is always now. Now is consciousness. And consciousness is who you are. That's the equation.

Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wanderhelplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man's lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities--a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel.

Extreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vitality, and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

Music, especially as an adolescent, helps to build identity because that's when people start developing a sense of self. You can kind of tell based on what music a person listens to what kind of person they'll be pretty much for the rest of their life.

When we cultivate mystical awareness or transcendent identity--which is a natural outgrowth of meditation and other practices--what happens is that we begin to take a witness position on our own lives, and that includes our minds. We break the illusion that we think our own thoughts, which is not always the case. Some ideas just arrive in our heads.

One of the things cognitive science teaches us is that when people define their very identity by a worldview, or a narrative, or a mode of thought, they are unlikely to change-for the simple reason that it is physically part of their brain, and so many other aspects of their brain structure would also have to change; that change is highly unlikely.

Identity is a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow.

The population suffers from a fear of change, for their conditioning assumes a static identity, and challenging ones belief system, usually results in insult and apprehension, for being wrong is erroneously associated with failure. When in fact, to be proven wrong should be a celebrated, for it is elevating someone to a new level of understanding.

Wind and storm colored July. Also, in the middle, cadaverous, awful, lay the grey puddle in the courtyard, when holding an envelope in my hand, I carried a message. I came to the puddle. I could not cross it. Identity failed me. We are nothing, I said, and fell. I was blown like a feather. I was wafted down tunnels. Then very gingerly, I pushed my foot across. I laid my hand against a brick wall. I returned very painfully, drawing myself back into my body over the grey, cadaverous space of the puddle. This is life then to which I am committed.

Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring.

Be alert and present and see that your identity is not from your past story; who you truly are is the alert presence that is inseparable from the present moment. You are this, which has no name and no form.

I went through some tough times because if you're used to having a voice in contemporary culture and all of sudden, you don't have that voice, you don't have that outlet. I didn't appreciate that. I didn't understand how important that was to me. And all of a sudden, after investing all this time and energy, I had no identity. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I had to say. I didn't have a way to say it. It was very painful.

Give people a common enemy, and you will give them a common identity. Deprive them of an enemy and you will deprive them of the crutch by which they know who they are.

But the building's identity resided in the ornament.

I feel that whatever picture an artist makes it is in part a picture of himself - a matter of identity.

Today there are millions of people making stuff and putting it into the world: that's become part of our identity and it shouldn't be limited to people who fancy themselves writers, or who are particularly witty or talented.

2010 is not just a choice between Republicans and Democrats. 2010 is not just a choice between liberals and conservatives. 2010 is a referendum on the very identity of our nation.

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.

My pride and identity is wrapped up in my big trips. But I can't always be on one - I need to plan them and fund them, and I want some semblance of a normal life too.

And my identity...I never really wondered about it because, unfortunately, I sounded like myself. People be saying I sound like Miles or Clifford Brown.

I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn't even know anymore why I was living.

Insight is the God given ability for you to know your Identity, your Kingdom ID; your spiritual DNA; your uniqueness in the earth and in the Body of Christ. There is no one like you. You are predestined for Greatness.