Quotes on Identity

I'm a product of my Irish culture, and I could no more lose that than I could my sense of identity.

For two centuries the English countryside has been an icon of national identity and the loved reminder of our island home. Yet the government is bent on littering the hills with wind turbines and the valleys with high speed railways.

You don't have to make something in order to retain your identity as an artist or a writer or a creative person. A lot of people think they have to be producing in order to maintain that identity.

What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, two or three languages, and several cultural traditions. It is precisely this that defines my identity. Would I exist more authentically if I cut off a part of myself

The indigenous peoples understand that they have to recover their cultural identity, or to live it if they have already recovered it. They also understand that this is not a favor or a concession, but simply their natural right to be recognized as belonging to a culture that is distinct from the Western culture, a culture in which they have to live their own faith.

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 first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith have always had to accept the mystery of God's identity and love and ways. I hate that, but it's the truth.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

Belief in one's identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one's immortality... and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.

The emptiness I speak about is not the emptiness the mind imagines. It is not blank. Your body can continue expressing in a natural way. Intelligence is there. Emotions can come. Everything can play, but inside there is total serenity and peace. No planning, no strategising, no personal identity is there. Just the space of pure being. It is what we are, but we dream and believe we are not.

In the Shadow of Slavery covers two and a half centuries of black life in New York City, and skillfully interweaves the categories of race and class as they affected the formation of African American identity. Leslie Harris has made a major contribution to our understanding of the black experience.

It was the slave's continuing desire for recognition that was the motor which propelled history forward, not the idle complacency and unchanging self-identity of the master

Part of the puzzle, surely, lies in the disconnect between official rhetoric and lived realities. Americans are constantly extolling “traditions”; litanies to family values are at the center of every politician’s discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined as “identities” that fit in the larger patterns of distinctiveness, cooperation, and openness to innovation.

The basis for sustainable progress is legal protections grounded in an awareness of how identity has been used to deny opportunity.

You people always hold onto old identities, old faces and masks, long after they've served their purpose. But you've got to learn to throw things away eventually.

The true identity theft is not financial. It's not in cyberspace. It's spiritual. It's been taken.

We can inspire others through witness so that one grows together in communicating. BUt the worst thing of all is religious proselytism, which paralyses: 'I am talking with you in order to persuade you.' No. Each person dialogues, starting with his and her own identity. The church grows by attracting, not proselytizing.

In some sense, when you take a child soldier out of an armed group, you've taken away the identity he or she has had for years, and you can't assume life is just going to return to normal.

Never forget your real identity. You are a luminous conscious stardust being forged in the crucible of cosmic fire.

All these seven colors are part of one rainbow, yet they are all different. They have their own quality, their own identity, their own flavor to it. So it is a rainbow. The Divine loves diversity, that is why he made us all different.

Myths give us our sense of personal identity, answering the question, 'Who am I?'