Quotes & Sayings About Identity

Trauma silences a person. It shatters your identity, and along with it, much of what you thought you knew. — Sandra Lee Dennis

Lord Jesus, thank You that my identity and worth is firmly rooted in You. My job doesn't define me, my relationships don't define me, and my various roles don't define me. I praise You for declaring me holy and dearly loved. You paid the highest price for my soul. How I thank You that I have value and significance in You. I am Your masterpiece, and You have gifted me uniquely for the roles You desire for me to play in Your kingdom. Thank You that I don't need to compare my gifts to the gifts of others in order to feel special. In Your kingdom, I am a royal priest/priestess. I praise You that I am a coheir with Christ and have inherited every blessing through Him. (Col. 3:12; 1 Cor. 6:12; Eph. 2:10; Isa. 43:4; Rom. 8:17) — Becky Harling

The only antidote to the unnerving effects of such incoherence is integrity. People and organizations with integrity are wholly themselves. No aspect of self stands different or apart. At their center is clarity, not conflict. When they go inside to find themselves, there is only one self there. — Margaret Wheatley

The idea of reputation, influence, and influencers in the offline world is as old as the hills. It's not new on the web either, but semantic search is creating a portable sense of identity, reputation, and influence that in the days before it simply did not exist. And this is changing everything — David Amerland

I hated being "Mrs." from the first second each time. I didn't know why. All I knew was how uncomfortable it felt. I hated being one half of a couple, without understanding that it wasn't the husband or the man I hated, it was situation, the identity. — Vivian Gornick

Your new identity will protect you from the world precisely because it is not "you"; it is a costume you put on and take off. You need not take it personally. And your new identity sets you apart, gives you theatrical presence. Those in the back rows can see you and hear you. Those in the front rows marvel at your audacity. — Robert Greene

Look at every territorial dispute you care to mention. Northern Ireland, for instance." "Religion in that case," Jamie ventured. "Not just. Religion was the badge of identity, but it wasn't really about whether you went to Mass or to a tub-thumping Protestant chapel. It was a result of the movement of people. The Protestant planters - many of them Scots - replaced the native Irish, remember? Movement of people again. — Alexander McCall Smith

I did everything in my power to give my brokers brand identity and clout in the market. I saw my job as parent to build them up and if I took care of them, then they would take care of their customer. — Barbara Corcoran

As for major obstacles keeping young Latinos from becoming filmmakers, I think our communities are still coming into their identities as storytellers. It's such an important identity to reclaim - it's how our ancestors kept our cultures alive. But a long history of silencing, invisibility, and marginalization has kept generations of Latinos from believing in themselves, from seeing themselves as agents of their own lives. I think there needs to be a focus on this aspect to help cultivate young Latinas to see themselves as cultural producers and defenders. — Aurora Guerrero

We are what we are... — Ke$ha

Every American has a unique identity. I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all, I am proud to be an American. — Peter Thiel

The TV generation is postliterate and retribalized. It seeks by violence to scrub the old private image and to merge in a new tribal identity, like any corporate executive. — Marshall McLuhan

Even now, she wished she could write a note, push it across the table, and go away to her room. But she was no longer a Second Assistant Librarian of the Great Library of the Clayr. Those days were gone, vanished with everything else that had defined her previous existence and identity. — Garth Nix

I had observed people whose identity crises around race seemed analogous to other people's identity crises around gender. — Jess Row

The Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit has suggested that the important thing is not a person's identity but his or her identifications.

Tablet: A New Read on Jewish Life — David Kaufmann

Hide in the morrow. No one will look for you there. — Ljupka Cvetanova

Mind is not really 'inside' us in the same sense that our intestines are. Our individuality is a kind of eddy in the sea of mind, a reflection of the total identity of the universal humanity. — Colin Wilson

It's funny how you can become something merely by forgetting who you once were. — Chrissy Moon

Whenever you feel compelled to put others first at the expense of yourself, you are denying your own reality, your own identity. — David Stafford

I've wanted to win at everything, every day, since I was a kid. And time doesn't change a person, it just helps you get a handle on who you are. Even at age 41, I still hate losing
I'm just more gracious about it. I'm also aware that setbacks have an upside; they fuel new dreams. — Dara Torres

The present age is demented. It is possessed by a sense of dislocation, a loss of personal identity, an alternating sentimentality and rage which, in an individual patient, could be characterized as dementia. — Walker Percy

The wholeness, coherence, identity, which we attribute to the depicted scene [in a photograph] is a projection, a refusal of an impoverished reality in favour of an imagined plenitude. — Victor Burgin

How do you manage your online identity? It's something I talk about with my students all the time. — Hasan M. Elahi

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

I've never been a fan of personality-conflict burgers and identity-crisis omelets with patchouli oil. I function very well on a diet that consists of Chicken Catastrophe and Eggs Overwhelming and a tall, cool Janitor-in-a-Drum. I like to walk out of a restaurant with enough gas to open a Mobil station. — Tom Waits

System uptime, data protection, and identity theft are weighty issues. It takes real ingenuity to out-think the fraudsters who are trying to steal identities and hack into enterprise systems. The 12 smart companies that debuted security solutions today at DEMO have designed serious, and seriously clever, innovations. — Chris Shipley

We are all an instrument with a special notation to our individual identity. When you incorporate many beautiful notes together, you envelop a harmonious orchestra. — Steven Cuoco

Your work is your identity, your life is your message. — Srivyal Vuyyuri

This life will try to break you; the people around you will fail you; but God is for you. When you take your identity out of the hands of man and place it in the heart of God, you will find what you've been looking for. — Tammy Strait

The greatest power you have is your faith. F-A-I-T-H. And the word faith stands for Fantastic Adventures In Trusting Him. God will be there to fight all your battles, all you have to do is let him. Faith is very strong. Part of my life ministry is talking about God in terms of bringing back who I really am to the forefront of my identity. — Gary Busey

Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it's a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that. Ideally, though, we're lucky, and we find our soul mate and enjoy that life-changing mother lode of happiness. But a soul mate is a very hard thing to find. — Aziz Ansari

Bodies are not only biological phenomena but also complex social creations onto which meanings have been variously composed and imposed according to time and space. — Katrina Karkazis

When you make the effort to speak someone else's language, even if it's just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, "I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being." That — Trevor Noah

A girl has the power to go forward in her life. And she's not only a mother, she's not only a sister, she's not only a wife. But a girl has the - she should have an identity. She should be recognized and she has equal rights as a boy. — Malala Yousafzai

I feel very strongly that all Japanese at that time had the idea drilled into them of 1999 being the end of the world. Aum renunciates have already accepted, inside themselves, the end of the world, because when they become a renunciate, they discard themselves totally, thereby abandoning the world. In other words, Aum is a collection of people who have accepted the end. People who continue to hold out hope for the near future still have an attachment to the world. If you have attachments, you will not discard your Self, but for Renunciates it's as if they've leaped right off the cliff. And taking a giant leap like that feels good. They lose something - but gain something in return. — Haruki Murakami

The more aware individuals are of the themes that are central to their own sense of personal identity, the better they can recognize the dimensions of similarity and difference in other people that will contribute to intimate relationships. — Barbara M. Newman

Any classification according to a singular identity polarizes people in a particular way, but if we take note of the fact that we have many different identities - related not just to religion but also to language, occupation and business, politics, class and poverty, and many others - we can see that the polarization of one can be resisted by a fuller picture. So knowledge and understanding are extremely important to fight against singular polarization. — Amartya Sen

There was a way in which my grandmother's true self was not these guests' business; no one's true self was the business of more than a very small number of family members or close friends. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I'm not attached to a certain scene. There was certain music - and techno was a part of it - that really formulated something for me, that really was a direct connection to what I experienced in my life. Going to parties and listening to techno at home helped form my musical identity. And that changed throughout my life. — Pantha Du Prince

Identity is a concept of our age that should be used very carefully. All types of identities, ethnic, national, religious, sexual or whatever else, can become your prison after a while. The identity that you stand up for can enslave you and close you to the rest of the world. — Murathan Mungan

And Complicated Grief is a text that announces, from the start, in its citation of influence, dense intertextuality and hybridity, a failure of some apparent or usual protections, and a need to re-examine "identity" in the light of an acknowledgement of our entanglements and interdependence. — Laura Mullen

While the secular world pushes woman to find her identity in herself as a sex object, the popular teachings in the Church, equally mistaken, encourage woman to find her identity in her roles as wife and mother rather than in her status as a person in Christ, a daughter complete in Him. — Leanne Payne

Today as never before in their history, Americans are enthralled with military power. The global military supremacy that the United States presently enjoys - and is bent on perpetuating - has become central to our national identity. More than America's matchless material abundance or even the effusions of its pop culture, the nation's arsenal of high tech weaponry and the soldiers who employ that arsenal have come to signify who we are and what we stand for. — James McCartney

war historian Paul Fussell suggests that in World War II heavy drinking was the answer to fear, boredom and the terrible damage to the sense of identity experienced by so many combatants. Drunkenness, he writes, did for the men of this war what drugs did for the next generation in Vietnam. — Liz Byrski

Identity is theft, don't trust anyone whose state vector hasn't forked for more than a gigasecond, change is the only constant, et bloody cetera. — Charles Stross

A kind of joy came upon him, as if borne in on a summer breeze. He dimly recalled that he had been thinking of failure
as if it mattered. It seemed to him now that such thoughts were mean, unworthy of what his life had been. Dim presences gathered at the edge of his consciousness; he could not see them, but he knew that they were there, gathering their forces toward a kind of palpability he could not see or hear. He was approaching them, he knew; but there was no need to hurry. He could ignore them if he wished; he had all the time there was.
There was a softness around him, and a languor crept upon his limbs. A sense of his own identity came upon him with a sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been. — John Edward Williams

Everyone has an identity. One of their own, and one for show. — Jacqueline Susann

The Christian community, therefore, is that community that freely becomes oppressed, because they know that Jesus himself has defined humanity's liberation in the context of what happens to the little ones. Christians join the cause of the oppressed in the fight for justice not because of some philosophical principle of "the Good" or because of a religious feeling of sympathy for people in prison. Sympathy does not change the structures of injustice. The authentic identity of Christians with the poor is found in the claim which the Jesus-encounter lays upon their own life-style, a claim that connects the word "Christian" with the liberation of the poor. Christians fight not for humanity in general but for themselves and out of their love for concrete human beings. — James H. Cone

Because modern society has almost completely eliminated trauma and violence from everyday life, anyone who does suffer those things is deemed to be extraordinarily unfortunate. This gives people access to sympathy and resources but also creates an identity of victimhood that can delay recovery. — Sebastian Junger

I love really exploring ... you know, a cop drama for example is a great way to explore class in this country and explore, you know, really, identity in the country and who we are in a way that is extremely exciting, but it's also real, you know, it's also real people and real drama. The same with the military. I mean, a good science fiction story is also great. — Ethan Hawke

I sometimes regretted to be handsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and a small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed in figure ... And why had I these aspirations and these regrets? It would be difficult to say — Charlotte Bronte

identity? Maybe the man who had my family — James Patterson

Every family has a story that it tells itself, that it passes on to the children and grandchildren. The story grows over the years, mutates, some parts are sharpened, others dropped, and there is often debate about what really happened. But even with these different sides of the same story, there is still agreement that this is the family story. And in the absence of other narratives, it becomes the flagpole that the family hangs its identity from. — A.M. Homes

By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world. — Alain De Botton

Recent events in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have reaffirmed for me, however, the complete folly of any Republican strategy to increase black representation in the Republican Party by appeals based on race. Whatever the name- 'African American Outreach' or 'Black Republicans for Bush'- any effort to attract blacks or any other ethnic group to the Republican party, based on explicit or implicit appeals to race or ethnic identity, are not only a waste of time and resources, but are also misguided and potentially quite damaging to the nation. — Ward Connerly

I'm back in the basement of the Ascension Catholic Church, Francisco. And Little Suzie is here. She's lying on an alter, and they're hurting her. The bastards. They're hurting her. There is blood all over the place. There are candles burning and people chanting." I could hardly believe what I was seeing and I cried out, "What is this? I don't understand. What the hell is this?"
"Ask your unconscious mind to tell you, Suzie," he responded, ever so gently. "Ask."
I did ask. And the answer swept over me with a force so strong that I felt as if I had been knocked backward.
"Lord! Oh, Lord. This is satanic ritual abuse, Francisco. That's what this is! That's what this is!" I screamed. "Satanic ritual abuse. And they're using Little Suzie as part of their goddamned ritual.
p150 — Suzie Burke

With programmes such as flooding of emotions, the parts involved might not feel safe in turning the programme off. But you might be able to negotiate that they turn it down so it is barely noticeable. Or you could ask the spinner parts to spin in the opposite direction, so that they spin the effects back into the part who originally held those feelings rather than out to the rest of the system. Or you could insert a hidden drain and start draining out some of the feelings. Or you could find a way for the parts doing their jobs to implement the programme without doing harm. p126-127 — Alison Miller

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

Identity crises is the barrier to success discovery — Dr Lloyd Magangeni

There are great truths at the foundation of Freemasonry, truths which it is its mission to teach and which is constituting the very essence of, that sublime system which gives the venerable institution its peculiar identity as a science of morality, and it behooves every disciple diligently to ponder and inwardly digest. — Albert Pike

As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls. — Sonia Sotomayor

The anything-goes passiveness of the religious and political Left is matched by the preachy moralism of the religious and political Right. The person who uncritically embraces any party line is guilty of an idolatrous surrender of her core identity as Abba's Child. Neither liberal fairy dust nor conservative hardball addresses our ragged human dignity. — Brennan Manning

One is either an artist or one is not. It is not something one becomes. It is something that one is from birth. We do not study to be artists. We study to become more proficient. To understand more. — Edward Swift

One identity is as a television writer, which is very classically Southern California, but another of my personae is as a New Yorker cartoonist. — Bruce Eric Kaplan

What does it mean to a person whose identity is very wrapped up in the music she makes, if her worth is measured by how many records she sells? — Juliana Hatfield

We therapists often make inaccurate assumptions about people living with DID and DDNOS. They often appear to be "just like us," so we often assume their experience of life reflects our own. But this is profoundly untrue. It results in a communication gap, and, as a consequence, treatment errors. Because the dominant culture is one of persons with a single sense of self, most with multiple "selves" have learned to hide their multiplicity and imitate those who are singletons (that is, have a single, non-fragmented personality). Therapists who do not understand this sometimes describe their clients' alters without acknowledging their dissociation, saying only that they have different "moods." In overlooking dissociation, this description fails to recognize the essential truth of such disorders, and of the alters. It was difficult for me to comprehend what life was like for my first few dissociative clients. — Alison Miller

Enlightenment is beyond self-improvement and spiritual seeking. It is the final resolution of a case of mistaken identity. It is the direct recognition of your eternal nature and the seeing through of who you have falsely believed yourself to be. — Gary Crowley

In human beings, love is a quality, a high-prized virtue; in God, love is His identity. — Brennan Manning

You can start looking for your purpose in life after you have identify who you are — Sunday Adelaja

Dutton, the home of Winnie the Pooh, would find a second identity as a home for gay fiction. — Christopher Bram

To practice virtue is to selflessly offer assistance to others, giving without limitation one's time, abilities, and possessions in service, whenever and wherever needed, without prejudice concerning the identity of those in need. — Laozi

I wanted to be that,
The one which was vast,
The one which laughed,
The one which surpassed,
Yes, which also collapsed.
True, it was abstract.
I wanted to be that.
I still, want to be that! — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

I don't like this, Toua," I go on. "We're like birds that have flown a very long way from their nest. We're like nettles in a garden full of hops. We shouldn't have to hide who we are. Our faces are unseen. — Rose Christo

If people are always comfortable with you, you're probably not telling them the whole truth. — Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel

My identity is mostly as a songwriter and lyricist and singer. I also have a lot of production ideas but I have my own limitations in terms of what instruments I'm actually proficient at and what I can do myself, so I really love working with people on the production end; just really going for it with orchestration and instrumentation and production. That's where I see myself going: maintaining my integrity and abilities as a songwriter, but applying it to different contexts, to where I can put on a huge feathered costume and roll around in the ocean. — Mirah

I think we carry around the idea of being a Kid in the Hall as part of our identity. It's a big part of how we see ourselves now. — Dave Foley

He was the first to recognise me, and to love what he saw. — Charlotte Bronte

We carve on our body what society teaches us and continue this task, not knowing the identity they force us to have. This identity is carved on our faces and our skins. Not knowing our bodies have become "the paper made of human meat," we stuff our bodies and make them a theater where cultural symbols or suppressed symbols play. — Kim Hyesoon

The theme of Death is to Poetry what Mistaken Identity is to Drama. — Dannie Abse

I've been working a lot with identity and roots, being part of your roots. I went into this topic where I was trying to break the stereotype of Arabic language. The non-translation work, this is where I make the switch, where you don't need to translate. — EL Seed

Being Christian doesn't mean being anti-American, but it does mean that Christian identity and loyalty matter more than national identity and loyalty. When there is a conflict, Jesus is Lord. — Marcus J. Borg

When you know who you are as an artist and you have your own identity and got it figured out it helps you know what to write about. — Keifer Thompson

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like I'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself
if I could just come in I swear I'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me. — Miranda Lambert

What we need to do is enter sensibly into an age of liberty and peaceful diversity, casting aside the injustices of the past without replacing them by new ones or by other kinds of exclusion or intolerance, and recognising the right of everyone to include several linguistic allegiances within his own identity. — Amin Maalouf

The more woman aims for personal identity and autonomy ... the fiercer will be her struggle with nature - that is, with the intractable physical laws of her own body. And the more nature will punish her: 'Do not dare to be free! For your body does not belong to you.' — Camille Paglia

Freedom and diversity guard each other, and if a country could form the whole of one's character, Napoleon III and Victor Hugo would have been the same person ... if national identity means anything, it means something that comes with you wherever you go, and stays with you no matter how long you stay away. — Clive James

John Milton almost single-handedly created the identity of the writer as political activist. — Anna Beer

As for my identity within the context of New York nightlife? I left in the '90s, so I'm not part of the scene anymore. I'll always be interested in what's happening downtown, and I try and keep up with the changing faces on social media. — James St. James

You see in others who you are. — Bernard Malamud

People change, though, especially after they are dead. — Margaret Atwood

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. — Eckhart Tolle

The source of man's rights is not divine law or a congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A _ and man is man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product for his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational — Ayn Rand

However, as Gordon Fee has argued, it is doubtful whether Paul ever uses the language of "spirit" without some reference to the Holy Spirit. Here, then, while the immediate reference may be, indeed, to Paul's own "spirit," it is his spirit as taken up into the Holy Spirit. His "presence" with the Colossians, then, is not a simple "you will be in my thoughts and prayers," but involves a profound corporate sense of identity, based on and mediated by the Spirit of God. — Douglas J. Moo

Awakening is the experience of forgiving the illusion of manifesting, for Identity Is Spirit. Christ comes not into form, but calls you out of the world to recognize your Self as eternal Spirit. — David Hoffmeister

I want a History of Looking. For the Photograph is the advent of myself as other: a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity. Even odder: it was before Photography that men had the most to say about the vision of the double. Heautoscopy was compared with an hallucinosis; for centuries this was a great mythic theme. — Roland Barthes

The image of God, then, involves gender identity and complementarity. God created gender in duality as male and female. — Andrew Comiskey

The loss of national identity is the greatest defeat a nation can know, and it is inevitable under the contemporary form of colonization. — Slobodan Milosevic

So ended the formative period in [his] life, the single year that set in motion all the clockwork of his future identity. Thinking back on it, I wonder if it isn't the same for all of us. Adulthood is a glacier encroaching quietly on youth. When it arrives, the stamp of childhood suddenly freezes, capturing us for good in the image of our last act, the pose we struck when the ice of age set in. — Ian Caldwell

At some point we must achieve our identity -we can't be always in adolescence seeking who we are ... — John Geddes

I had rather be a meteor, single, alone.'

Plus Paris itself was noisome. Even with its glittering bridges and orangeries, even if the birthplace of ballet.

'I had rather been a meteor, than a star in a crowd. — Danielle Dutton