Quotes About Identity

Very few towns or cities are founded at a stroke, by a single individual. They are usually the product of gradual changes in population, in patterns of settlement, social organisation and sense of identity. Most 'foundations' are retrospective constructions, projecting back into the distant past a microcosm, or imagined primitive version, of the later city.

To put this the other way round, we have no template for what a powerful woman looks like, except that she looks rather like a man.

if they are bearded, they are after 117 CE. This

Lord Palmerston and John F. Kennedy proudly broadcast the Latin phrase Civis Romanus sum ('I am a Roman citizen') as a slogan for their times.

Nonetheless, whatever mystery surrounds them, the Olmec have left us a powerful in-your-face reminder that across the world, when people first made art they made it about themselves. From the very beginning art has been about us.

The simple reason that, in the 60s CE, Saint Peter was crucified while Saint Paul enjoyed the privilege of being beheaded was that Paul was a Roman citizen.

they redefined the word 'Latin' so that it was no longer an ethnic identity but a political status unrelated to race or geography. This set the stage for a model of citizenship and 'belonging' that had enormous significance for Roman ideas of government, political rights, ethnicity and 'nationhood'.

The name 'Romulus' is itself a give-away. Although Romans usually assumed that he had lent his name to his newly established city, we are now fairly confident that the opposite was the case: 'Romulus' was an imaginative construction out of 'Roma'. 'Romulus' was merely the archetypal 'Mr Rome'. Besides

these white people have lost their own gods and mislaid their souls. They have trouble dealing with reality, with death.

They are hungering for "a deep sexual experience." They'll sleep with anybody who wears braids or a choker. I

The white man oppresses the half-blood, the half-blood oppresses the full-blood, and everybody takes out their anger, despair, and feeling of helplessness on the women.

The Japanese say we have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends and family. The third face, you never show anyone. It is the truest reflection of who you are.—Unknown

Why did perfect feel broken?

But of Paris it can be said that the right bank of the Seine belongs to the world, and the left bank to France.

Why couldn't people just be who they were? Womanizers, drinkers, liars, and manipulators, instead of pretending around it all, hiding the secrets like dirty laundry stuffed under a bed, and then dying, so the grieving got whammed with two losses—the flesh-and-blood bodies and the images they thought they knew.

Sometimes you had to fight the bullies, even if they masqueraded in the form of family.

We're so busy trying to please those we care about, that we lose track of what's important to us.

People walked away all the time, telling themselves they'd be giving up a huge piece of self if they compromised but in the end, the uncompromised individual ended up with a whole piece of nothing.

leading two separate lives, refusing to choose one over the other. He'd stolen the best of both worlds: wealth and

Maybe Jenny and Grace weren't so different from the butterfly… maybe they both needed to simply be who they were, stop trying to wish themselves into something else, someone else… or their color would get rubbed off… by unmet expectations, friends, family… even themselves. Maybe it was time to learn to accept who they were… time to learn to protect their color.

Why do some women feel their only value is in their body? Why do they continue to stuff their shapes into too-tight dresses, their feet into stilettos, their brains into closed vaults that can't breathe and subsequently suffocate? Why do they tuck and nip and smooth when the ultimate beauty isn't on the surface at all? And why do they not see this?

If I was not really at home with everyone, neither was I a stranger to anyone, and if all my acquaintances were slightly skewed, well then, so was I.

From now on, I'm telling everyone I meet I'm in insurance. Or I'm a car dealer. Better yet—a Republican. That way, when they accuse me of doing the Devil's work, at least there will be some validity to their claims.

There was an unwritten rule that hearing people who knew sign should identify themselves whenever they were around Deaf people. Otherwise the Deaf people might be carrying on an extremely private conversation, assuming no one around them could understand them. To not identify yourself was a betrayal of trust.