We Define Ourselves Quotes & Sayings

Because we're not gay or straight, good or bad, single or married. We're human, and that means we're all sorts of things, and I know you don't want to hear one of my stupid ideas right now, but think about how often we're told to choose. Our whole lives we're asked to. Which team, which army, which political party? Even when that choice is hard, goes against what the majority considers acceptable, we still fail ourselves by letting it define us.
(Victor) — Jay Bell

However self-sufficient we may fancy ourselves, we exist only in relation
to our friend, family, and life partners; to those we teach and mentor; to our co-workers, neighbors, strangers; and even to forces we cannot fully conceive of, let alone define. In many ways, we are our relationships. — Derrick A. Bell

Like Batman, all of us hide behind our masks and use them to help define ourselves for others. We all have secret identities of a sort, hidden behind our smiling social-networking profiles or our happy church faces. They're not lies, really. They're just not the whole truth, because we know that most of the people we encounter day-to-day couldn't handle the truth (or perhaps we couldn't handle giving it to them). — Paul Asay

We define ourselves in relationship to Christ: who we are is how we relate to him. The Son, sent by the Father, lives in us through the Holy Spirit, and we can't truly meet ourselves until we meet him. — Adam S. McHugh

The most powerful force in the human psyche is people's need for their words and actions to stay consistent with their IDENTITY - how we define ourselves. — Tony Robbins

We define ourselves as intelligent. That's odd, because we're doing the definition - We're creating our own definition and saying, 'We are intelligent!' — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

We need to ask ourselves why are so busy. Sabbath helps us to question our assumptions. The truth is that we may be busy because we feel a need to validate our worth. Sabbath gives us a chance to step off the hampster wheel and listen to the voice that tells us we are beloved by God. The sabbath heals us from our compulsion to measure ourselves by what we accomplish, who we know, and the influence we have. Sabbath enables us to define ourselves less by our achievements and more as beloved daughters and sons of God. As we become more aware of how much we are cherished as children of God, we grow in our trust of God. — Ken Shigematsu

Justice to others and to ourselves is the same; that we cannot define our duties by mathematical lines ruled by the square, but must fill with them the great circle traced by the compasses — Albert Pike

I think of the security of cages. How violence, cruelty, oppression, become a kind of home, a familiar pattern, a cage, in which we know how to operate and define ourselves ... — Eve Ensler

Words are how others define us, but we can define ourselves any way we choose." I — Shaun David Hutchinson

The truth is that no one can keep you captive. No one can keep you unhappy. No one can keep you abused. Our lives rise to the level we accept. I do believe we can rise from the screaming blood of our losses, of extreme pain, physically debilitating emotion, psychological neglect, and apathy, and not merely survive, but thrive. We do not need to let our histories or our losses define us except in the way we choose. We can use them as fuel to create real depth, beauty, connectedness, and compassion in our lives. Our stories can make us exceptional people, not damaged ones. If we choose to be truthful with ourselves. And if we choose to digest and release the pain rather than try to avoid it. This is how pain accumulates and creates more pain, leading to neurosis, pathology, and brittleness of spirit. — Jewel

At culinary school, none of the things we use to define ourselves outside that world - actor, producer, student - none of that matters. It's a magical art form. — Eric Christian Olsen

We do not define ourselves as men or as women through our work, our house, our health, or our reputation. We define ourselves as men and women through the way we love. — Simone Troisi

Fans decide what pop culture is. We can define ourselves. Music and the presentation of art nowadays is totally in our control, with the Internet specifically. You no longer need record labels. You no longer need movie distribution companies. You can just make it and put it online, and it will distribute itself to millions of people. The borders and everything have been broken down. It really is in the hands of the people. — Laura Jane Grace

The question of what we are can only be answered by ourselves. We each decide what we are by the life choices we make. How we were made, who are parents are, where we are from, the color of our skin, who we choose to love, all those things do not define us. Our actions define us, and will keep defining us until even after death. — P.C. Cast

I realized once again that what I believed myself to be was an arbitrary deformation, a rational mask floating in the infinite unexplored internal shadows. Later, I understood that diseases do not actually sicken us; they sicken what we believe ourselves to be. Health is achieved by overcoming prohibitions, quitting paths that are not right for us, ceasing to pursue imposed ideals, and becoming ourselves: the impersonal consciousness that does not define itself. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

The lesson, I suppose, is that none of us have much control over how we will be remembered. Every life is an amalgam, and it is impossible to know what moments, what foibles, what charms will come to define us once we're gone. All we can do is live our lives fully, be authentically ourselves, and trust that the right things about us, the best and most fitting things, will echo in the memories of us that endure. — Alice McDermott

We reduce, concretize, or substantialize experiences or feelings, which are, in their very nature, fleeting or evanescent. In so doing, we define ourselves by our moods and by our thoughts. We do not just let ourselves be happy or sad, for instance; we must become a happy person or a sad one. This is the chronic tendency of the ignorant or deluded mind, to make "things" out of that which is no thing. — Mark Epstein

John Hodgson can describe Richard Dawkins's atheism as vacuous only because 'atheist' is a term which non-believers use purely as a polemical convenience when we have to define concisely what we don't believe [ ... ]. No atheist is principally that. What we'd want to call ourselves is humanist or materialist, or biologist or linguist, or for that matter socialist, because one or more of these, or something else again, is what we do and think and are. We have 'purely and simply finished with God', to adapt a phrase of Engels's. — David Craig

I don't write or think too much about the word "salvation." I might; I probably should. We are such needy creatures, needing to be saved, to feel we are saved or might be, however we define ourselves, however we define that word. — Pattiann Rogers

It's not the circumstances we find ourselves in that define us, it's how we overcome them. — Nicole Reed

On the surface, we are all different. We ascribe to a variety of belief systems, attain our identity from various stories, get our customs from diverse cultures, and so on. And, rightly or wrongly, we generally define ourselves by these differences - there is no denying that. However, when we look beneath the surface, we discover certain universal elements. — Gudjon Bergmann

How we treat the vulnerable is how we define ourselves as a species. — Russell Brand

'The 5th Wave' is sci-fi, but I tried very hard to ground the story in very human terms and in those universal themes that transcend genre. How do we define ourselves? What, exactly, does it mean to be human? What remains after everything we trust, everything we believe in and rely upon, has been stripped away? — Rick Yancey

We define ourselves by the best that is in us, not the worst that has been done to us. — Edward B. Lewis

We all fictionalize ourselves in the process of creating a story out of the raw materials of our life. For some it is a soap opera, for others an epic, but, for all of us, it's an ongoing narrative that we constantly manipulate and reshape, improving (like the best anecdotes) in the retelling. This is not just true of writers. The story is one of the key ways we define and order our experiences as human beings: how we tell ourselves and others who we are.
(from the Daily Telegraph) — Neil McCormick

We're moving into an era when we will define ourselves more by the technologies we refuse than the ones we accept. — Douglas Rushkoff

Even if atheists were right
that prayer is wishful thinking
they are right only in relation to God, not in relation to wishing. The importance of prayer is that it is an expression of our spiritual nature, and when we wish for love, peace,for our own good and the good of others we define ourselves as more than flesh and blood. We define ourselves as hoping, loving, and imagining beings who crave to know the source of our being. — R. Joseph Hoffmann

How do we define, how do we describe, how do we explain and/or understand ourselves? What sort of creatures do we take ourselves to be? What are we? Who are we? Why are we? How do we come to be what or who we are or take ourselves to be? How do we give an account of ourselves? How do we account for ourselves, our actions, interactions, transactions (praxis), our biologic processes? Our specific human existence? — R.D. Laing

Stories are epically important to how we view and interact in the world around us. We define ourselves, our abilities and even our goals by the stories we believe and share. These stories become part of our personal view of our world. — Lyssa Danehy DeHart

I've seen extreme bravery from the least likely of people. Life is about the moments when it's all gone wrong. That's when we define ourselves. — Bear Grylls

The ability to see our lives as stories and share those stories with others is at the core of what it means to be human. We use stories to order and make sense of our lives, to define who we are, even to construct our realities: this happened, then this happened, then this. I was, I am, I will be. We recount our dreams, narrate our days and organize our memories into stories we tell others and ourselves. As natural-born storytellers, we respond to others' stories because they are deeply, intimately familiar. — John Capecci And Timothy Cage

The decisions that we write off as momentary, insignificant, incidental, everyday encounters are exactly when we have a chance to define ourselves. To find beauty. To engage the world around us. To create memories. — Teri Hatcher

We can't let boys define how we feel about ourselves. You have to know who you are before you should let any boy worth anything in. — Kasie West

Yet in making our choices we must sometimes start with a vision, however inchoate, of what it is for a human life to go well. That was one of Aristotle's central insights. It is my argument that we should be free to avail ourselves of the resources of many disciplines to define that vision; and that in bringing them together we are being faithful to a long tradition. In the humanities,
I think, we are always engaged in illuminating the present by drawing on the past; it is the only way to make a future worth hoping for. — Kwame Anthony Appiah

For Black women as well as Black men, it is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others - for their use and to our detriment. — Audre Lorde

Once we know our elements we know our strengths, but that is nothing compared with our weaknesses. Our strengths define us, but our weaknesses limit us. It's a constant tug of war in ourselves. — Katie Kacvinsky

We have needed to define ourselves by reclaiming the words that define us. They have used language as weapons. When we open ourselves to what they say and how they say it, our narrow prejudices evaporate and we are nourished and armed. — Selma James

To forgive another from the heart is an act of liberation. We set that person free from the negative bonds that exist between us. As long as we do not forgive we pull them with us, or worse, as a heavy load. The great temptation is to cling in anger to our enemies & then define ourselves as being offended & wounded by them. Forgiveness, therefore, liberates not only the other but also ourselves. It is the way to the freedom of the children of God. — Henri Nouwen

It is important to realize that we so often define ourselves by what is in opposition to ourselves. — Chris Matakas

With that said, don't be trifling about being a feminist. It really infuriates me when high-profile people in your position self-identity as feminists just because it's trendy at the moment and then don't do any of the, you know, actual work of trying to make things equal for everybody. You're going to have to roll up your sleeves and get dirty in order to create a society that takes women as seriously as the men. The type that encourages us to not define ourselves by who we go to bed with at night, but by who and what we see reflected back at us in the mirror in the morning. The type that recognizes that women are not a monolith and that they have wildly different experiences informed by their race and/or sexuality. Be that beacon of light that we can look toward. Be the feminist who will help normalize the idea of Feminism for society. Be the feminist everyone needs. No presh. 3C. — Phoebe Robinson

My parents always told me that life is about asking questions which I didn't understand that until more recently. See the truth is like life is like a collection of questions really if you think about it. Or at least the ones we choose to acknowledge. See within those questions that we choose to acknowledge we answer them for ourselves because we have the need to and in those answers I believe that we find our own meaning, we find our own definition, we define what is we stand for, you know what I'm saying; who we are as people, as individuals, what we believe in. And that's how we celebrate our individuality. Now you would think that individuality would separate us but on the contrary the truth is we all answer pretty much the same basic questions for ourselves, they're not complicated questions you know. They're very simple, basic universal questions and that's why I wrote this song — Miguel

Being good or being evil is not something that is inherent in our nature over which we have no control, rather we define ourselves by the choices we make, moment by moment, situation by situation. All it takes is an act of will to be the best that we can be. — Laurence Overmire

We define ourselves, in part, by the discriminations we make. The value of what we love is enriched by our understanding of what we dislike. — David Ansen

When they have contemplated the world, human beings have always experienced a transcendence and mystery at the heart of existence. They have felt that it is deeply connected with themselves and with the natural world, but that it also goes beyond. However we choose to define it - it has been called God, Brahman, or Nirvana - this transcendence has been a fact of human life. We have all experienced something similar, whatever our theological opinions, when we listen to a great piece of music or hear a beautiful poem and feel touched within and lifted, momentarily, beyond ourselves. We tend to seek out this experience, and if we do not find it in one setting - in a church or synagogue, for example - we would look elsewhere. — Karen Armstrong

Life probably does not hand us any more visceral experience of how we mistakenly define ourselves than by means of our physical body. From the day we were born, the message we received from the world was that we are our body. This was the first great lie we were given by means of the collective consciousness of humankind, which has always valued itself from the outside in. — Dennis Merritt Jones

[T]he concern of man is not his future but his present, not the world but his soul. We must be just, we must strive, we must engage ourselves with the business of the world for our own sake, because through that, and through contemplation in equal measure, our soul is purified and brought closer to the divine ... Thought and deed conjoined are crucial ... The attempt must be made; the outcome is irrelevant. Right action is a pale material reflection of the divine, but reflection it is, nonetheless. Define your goal and exert reason to accomplish it by virtuous action; successs or failure is secondary. — Iain Pears

We're not words, Henry, we're people.
Words are how others define us, but we can define ourselves any way we choose. — Shaun David Hutchinson

We are also not what others think of us. Our reputations do not define our true worth. Every person we know has an opinion of us. We drive ourselves crazy wondering what those opinion are and trying to change the ones that aren't favorable. — Toni Sorenson

If we define Megaphone as the composite of hundreds of voices we hear each day that come to us from people we don't know, via high-tech sources, it's clear that a significant and ascendant component of that voice has become bottom-dwelling, shrill, incurious, ranting, and agenda-driven. It strives to antagonize us, make us feel anxious, ineffective, and alone; convince us that the world is full of enemies and of people stupider and less agreeable than ourselves; is dedicated to the idea that, outside the sphere of our immediate experience, the world works in a different, more hostile, less knowable manner. This braindead tendency is viral and manifests intermittently; while it is the blood in the veins of some of your media figures, it flickers on and off in others. — George Saunders

I'm convinced that if we don't define ourselves, other people will do it for us, and inaccurately. — Hasan M. Elahi

We must define a story which encourages us to make use of the place where we live without killing it, and we must understand that the living world cannot be replicated. There will never be another setup like the one in which we thrived. Ruin it and we will have lost ourselves, and that is craziness. — William Kittredge

The way we view fiction is a reflection of how we define ourselves as a nation. Works of the imagination are canaries in the coal mine, the measure by which we can evaluate the health of the rest of society. — Azar Nafisi

I mean one of the things about being alone is that you've no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because let's face it, we don't often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we. — Diana Wynne Jones

It is so important that we as spiritual people should not define ourselves only by our profession — Sunday Adelaja

I wish I was like that. More carefree."
"Anyone can be. People aren't carved out of marble. We're all works in progress. The trick is to define ourselves, rather than let outside influences define us. — J.A. Konrath

Comparison, a great teacher once told me, is the cardinal sin of modern life. It traps us in a game that we can't win. Once we define ourselves in terms of others, we lose the freedom to shape our own lives. — James C. Collins

We aren't who our pasts say we are. Damage doesn't define us. WE DEFINE OURSELVES. — Cynthia Eden

The trap of the self is the trap that causes unhappiness. We define ourselves too much; whereas the infinite, the pure radiant spirit, is not so definable. — Frederick Lenz

When we really start to take a look at who we think we are ... we start to see that while we may have various thoughts, beliefs, and identities, they do not individually or collectively tell us who we are. [And yet] it is astounding how completely we humans define ourselves by the content of our minds, feelings, and history. — Adyashanti

We need to punch back against the extremes of both the left and the right and define the terms of the debate ourselves. — John Avlon

Women have to work much harder to make it in this world. It really pisses me off that women don't get the same opportunities as men do, or money for that matter. Because lets face it, money gives men the power to run the show. It gives men the power to define our values and to define what's sexy and what's feminine and that's bullshit. At the end of the day, it's not about equal rights, it's about how we think. We have to reshape our own perception of how we view ourselves. — Beyonce Knowles

Many people hold onto a grudge because it offers the illusion of power and a perverse feeling of security. But in fact, we are held hostage by our anger. It is never too late to forgive. But you can forgive too soon. I am especially wary of what I call "saintly forgiveness." Premature forgiveness is common among people who avoid conflict. They're afraid of their own anger and the anger of others. But their forgiveness is false. Their anger goes underground. I define forgiving as letting someone back into your heart. This returns us to a loving state -- and not merely within the relationship -- we feel good about ourselves and the world. True forgiveness isn't easy, but it transforms us significantly. To forgive is to love and to feel worthy of love. In that sense, it is always worthwhile. — Robert Karen

For some people there is no comfort without pain. Thus; we define salvation through suffering. Hence, why we choose people who we know aren't right for ourselves. — Cato The Younger

Sanity, as the project of keeping ourselves recognizably human, therefore has to limit the range of human experience. To keep faith with recognition we have to stay recognizable. Sanity, in other words, becomes a pressing preoccupation as soon as we recognize the importance of recognition. When we define ourselves by what we can recognize, by what we can comprehend- rather than, say, by what we can describe- we are continually under threat from what we are unwilling and/or unable to see. We are tyrannized by our blind spots, and by whatever it is about ourselves that we find unacceptable. — Adam Phillips

For good or for bad, we define ourselves in many ways by the gadgets we use and the clothes we wear. We don't want to surround ourselves with cheap products. Nobody really aspires to that. We also don't want to pay for a diamond-encrusted ereader. We don't need bling; we just need to feel like the design speaks to us. — Jason Merkoski

There are conversations going on about the Church constantly. Those conversations will continue whether or not we choose to participate in them. But we cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what our Church teaches ... We are living in a world saturated with all kinds of voices. Perhaps now, more than ever, we have a major responsibility as Latter-day Saints to define ourselves, instead of letting others define us. — M. Russell Ballard

I don't think that trauma is an illusion; there is no question in my mind that circumstances beyond our control can shape and define us. But ultimately, we make choices about letting ourselves be defined by our pasts. — Christina Baker Kline

My point is that we much decolonize our minds and re-name and re-define ourselves ... In all respects, culturally, politically, socially, we must re-define ourselves and our lives, in our own terms. — Max Roach

I began thinking about why am I constructing almost a shadow father or ghost father in my head into Graham Greene in response to the father who created me? What's going on here? I think a part of my sense is it's every boy's story. When we are kids, we imagine that to define ourselves or to find ourselves means charting your own individuality, making your own destiny and actually running away from your parents and your home and what you grew up with. — Pico Iyer

It is all too easy to give ourselves over to the traumas of the past -- allowing pain to define us. There is a medicine for that -- hope and perseverance. Light brings light. And no matter what we face there is one thing we can control: our outlook. It's not about ignoring the pain, or mindlessly believing things will simply be better -- it's about finding the joy in participating. And when the weight of the past pulls us low we must find the strength to release it ... and finally give ourselves permission to start over. — Rick Remender

Every day we choose who we are by how we define ourselves. — Angelina Jolie

Many of us spend our entire lives in the same bubble - we surround ourselves with people who share our opinions, speak the way we speak, and look the way we look. We fear leaving those familiar surroundings, which is natural, but through exploration of the unfamiliar we stop focusing on the labels that define WHAT we are and discover WHO we are. — Adam Braun

If we define ourselves by each of the ever-changing feelings that cascade through us, how will we ever feel at home in our own bodies and minds? — Sharon Salzberg

All life has in it the dimension of the Unknown; it is a thing forever unfolding. It seems important to consider the possibility that science may have defined life too small. If we define life too small, we will define ourselves too small as well. — Rachel Naomi Remen

When we define ourselves, when I define myself, the place in which I am like you and the place in which I am not like you, I'm not excluding you from the joining - I'm broadening the joining. — Audre Lorde

To be free to roam our own consciousness and be responsible for ourselves, a letting go process is required. We have to let go of how others define us; what damaging messages remain from childhood; how others define our relationship with the creator; and what expectations they may have for us. — David W. Earle

Because two propositions can be true at once," he said. "Because the world is imperfect. Because we are imperfect. Because sometimes we're called upon to do terrible things. And because we define ourselves in dying, which is," he indicated by motioning with his head toward the arena, "what this is. Give us at least that. — Mark Helprin

We've been told that productivity is all, that rushing is an imperative, that going and doing and pushing define us. But God made a world of extraordinary beauty, and sometimes the most productive, most important thing we can do is slow ourselves down enough to see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, enter into it. When I stand before the cutting board, knife in hand, it's just another way, really, of praying. — Shauna Niequist

The Democratic Party had failed (in 1983)
'to remember waht got us this far and how we got here
moral indignation, decent instincts, a sense of shared sacrifice and mutual responsibility, and a set of national priorities that emphasized what we had in common.. The Party that was the engine of the national interest
molding our pluralistic interest into a compelling new social contract that served the nation well for fifty years
became perceived as little more than the broker of narrow special interests. Instead of thinking of ourselves as Americans first, Democrats second, and members of interest groups third, we have begun to think in terms of special interests first and the greater interest second.. We have let our opponents set the agenda and define what is at stake.
p. 140 — Joe Biden

Why are the super-rich for socialism? Don't they have the most to lose? I take a look at my bank account and compare it with Nelson Rockefeller's and it seems funny that I'm against socialism and he's out promoting it. Or is it funny? In reality, there is a vast difference between what the promoters define as socialism and what it is in actual practice. The idea that socialism is a share-the-wealth program is strictly a confidence game to get the people to surrender their freedom to an all-powerful collectivist government. While the Insiders tell us we are building a paradise on earth, we are actually constructing a jail for ourselves. — Gary Allen

I miss having a villain. Whether we realize it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favoring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act. Nothing arouses a passion for dogma more than a good antagonist. And the more unlikely the better. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

It is not those events outside of our control which we should allow to define us. Instead, the definition of who we choose to be is dictated by how we deal with these outside events within ourselves. — Tony C. Skye

The moment we begin to define others and ourselves by how we are different, the seeds of separation are planted. — Kim H. Krisco

We know God easily, if we do not constrain ourselves to define him. — Joseph Joubert

How we view ourselves and define ourselves is perhaps the most essential paradigm we have as human beings. It determines all of our actions and reactions. — David Clark

If we don't want to define ourselves by things as superficial as our appearances, we're stuck with the revolting alternative of being judged by our actions. — Ellen DeGeneres

It is highly unlikely that we, who can know, determine, and define the natural essences of all things surrounding us, which we are not, should ever be able to do the same for ourselves
this would be like jumping over our own shadows. — Hannah Arendt

We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. it is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more — Woody Allen

It reset and mended my freshly damaged and distorted view of life, and made me recognize that this thing we call music, this primal expression that we reshape and refine and define ourselves with, is the gift I was given. The ability to communicate what others feel but cannot fully express, the passing down and around of songs and stories, from Pete Townshend to Joey Ramone to me, to the audiences who take the time and effort to support our work and give us a way to support ourselves
I'm thinking this is what I am supposed to be doing. — Bob Mould

As we have sought through the centuries to define ourselves as human beings and as nations through the prisms of history and literature, no small part of that effort has drawn us to the subject of war. We might even say that the humanities began with war and from war, and have remained entwined with it ever since. — Drew Gilpin Faust

The brain-disease model overlooks four fundamental truths: (1) our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another. Restoring relationships and community is central to restoring well-being; (2) language gives us the power to change ourselves and others by communicating our experiences, helping us to define what we know, and finding a common sense of meaning; (3) we have the ability to regulate our own physiology, including some of the so-called involuntary functions of the body and brain, through such basic activities as breathing, moving, and touching; and (4) we can change social conditions to create environments in which children and adults can feel safe and where they can thrive. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Change means growth, and growth can be painful. But we sharpen self-definition by exposing the self in work and struggle together with those whom we define as different from ourselves, although sharing the same goals. (151) — Stewart Burns

We cannot let the haters of this world define us. Or frighten us into no longer being ourselves. — Mary E. DeMuth

As long as we define ourselves in terms of our pains and problems, we will never be free from them. — Eckhart Tolle

Accept the differences, because they are superficial.. Concentrate on the goodness in the other, rather than the difference. Yes. I knew that sounded simple, but I realized how seldom it's said. We divide ourselves in every waking moment. Blond or brunette. Blue states or red. Then we define ourselves by the divides. We do the same with love. — Franz Wisner

Whether we realise it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favouring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We have tendency to define ourselves in opposition to stuff. But try to also express your passion for things you love. Be demonstrative and generous in your praise of those you admire. Send thank-you cards and give standing ovations. Be pro-stuff, not just anti-stuff. — Tim Minchin

If we truly seek diversity in fiction, we have to let the needs of others come before our need to define ourselves as social justice allies. — Jennifer Armintrout

We can each define ambition and progress for ourselves. The goal is to work toward a world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents and interests. — Sheryl Sandberg