Quotes About Identity

What would I tell people? That I work in the Defense against the Dark Arts Division?" "I have another name in mind: Special Cases Unit.

Humans are exempt from biology.

Human nature is tabula rasa (a blank slate).7

I'm me and nobody else; and whatever people think I am or say I am, that's what I'm not, because they don't know a bloody thing about me.

Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not.

items that have become part of me, foliage that has grown to conceal the bare stem of my real personality, what I was like before I ever saw these books, or any book at all, come to that.

Michael Cullen talking to his mother) - You told me I never had a father, regretting such a stupid phrase when she replied: 'Who do you think you are, Jesus Christ? I'll get you a cross from Littlewoods if you like, or maybe I'll rent one for three days

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.

Music will always be a part of my life. I love music and I don't care how many units I sell.

I see the whole concept of Generation X implies that everyone has lost hope.

I'm clearly most well known for my music. Eventually, ultimately, I'll be writing books. I'm still writing articles now. I just consider myself a writer.

I am what I am Are you what you are or What?

People who care nothing for their country's stories and songs,' he said, 'are like people without a past- without a memory- they are half people

I'm afraid you'll have to take up art. Art is the only work open to people who can't get along with others and still want to be special.

Man is ... essentially a story-telling animal. That means I can only answer the question 'what am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question of 'what story or stories do I find myself a part of?

We) are never able to seek for the good or exercise the virtues only qua individual ... we all approach our own circumstances as bearers of a particular social identity. I am someone's son or daughter, a citizen of this or that city. I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation. ... I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation, a variety of debts, inheritances, expectations and obligations.

The concept of a person is that of a character abstracted from a history.

I can only answer the question 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?

I can be said truly to know who and what I am only because there are others who can be said truly to know who and what I am.

The individual carries his communal roles with him as part of the definition of his self, even into his isolation.

Turning complex, diverse places into shallow, simple ones creates a more culturally vulnerable population, an unrooted mass whose only linking thread lies in the ideology that is fed to them from above.