Quotes About Identity

And yet, as we have discovered, you are someone entirely different," he said gently. "You are no longer Ellyn the Fletcher." "And because of that you no longer love me?" "I will love you as long as I draw breath. But it may not be my right to love you any other way.

That's what this is about. It's somebody I lost, all right, it's my own self. Who I never was. Or who I tried to be and never got there. Somebody I waited for who never came. And never will.

Some people have censored so much of themselves for so long that they forget what it is they do feel and think.

MBR: In my lifetime I've been called a multitude of names, yet I can't recall seriously learning anything by being told what I am. I'd like to learn from your appreciation and enjoy it, but I would need more information.

Everyone clings to their history with a vengeance, because it anchors their identity. So when Marshall advocated peaceful talk, he was advocating a new identity at the same time. He fully realized this fact. As he states about Nonviolent Communication and the role of the mediator in this new third edition, "We're trying to live a different value system while we are asking for things to change.

The Mask Always a mask Held in the slim hand whitely Always she had a mask before her face— Truly the wrist Holding it lightly Fitted the task: Sometimes however Was there a shiver, Fingertip quiver, Ever so slightly— Holding the mask? For years and years and years I wondered But dared not ask And then— I blundered, Looked behind the mask, To find Nothing— She had no face. She had become Merely a hand Holding a mask With grace. —Author unknown

The payoff for Ahimsa isn't that you upgrade the illusion, which is what the ego is always striving to do with more money, possessions, and power. The payoff is that you get to be who you really are.

And I want him to know the subtle, sneaky, important reason why he was born a human being and not a chair.

While the effects of negative labels such as "lazy" and "stupid" may be more obvious, even a positive or an apparently neutral label such as "cook" limits our perception of the totality of another person's being.

Everyone clings to their history with a vengeance because it anchors their identity.

The self is seen as a psychological fiction, which means that its relationships are essentially fiction.

Let 'em call me a racist. It don't make any difference. Whole heap of folks in this country feel the same way I do. Race is what's gonna win this thing for me.

We can change not only our behavior but how we define ourselves. When we put ourselves in a box marked "That's not me," we ensure that we'll never get out of it.

What's more important? Your company or your life?" It was a rhetorical question. I was warning him that, stripped of his identity at the top of a sixty-thousand-employee organization, he was vulnerable to boredom, dislocation, depression. I'd seen it before in ex-CEOs who didn't prepare well for their corporate exit. It would be "irresponsible" if he didn't create a new identity for himself.

If I change I am "inauthentic." Many of us have a misguided belief that how we behave today not only defines us but represents our fixed and constant selves, the authentic us forever. If we change, we are somehow not being true to who we really are. This belief triggers stubbornness. We refuse to adapt our behavior to new situations because "it isn't me.

If you know what matters to you, it's easier to commit to change. If you can't identify what matters to you, you won't know when it's being threatened. And in my experience, people only change their ways when what they truly value is threatened.

You can be a French Canadian or an English Canadian, but not a Canadian. We know how to live without an identity, and this is one of our marvellous resources.

The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.

Canadians are the people who learned to live without the bold accents of the natural ego-trippers of other lands.

The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man.

The car has become... an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete.

America is the only country ever founded on the printed word.

The car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete in the urban compound.

Who are we without our memories?