Quotes About Identity

Culture constantly impregnates the newborn from the first day,

There is a paradox here: the paradox of a total being which is, in advance, everything which we can be and do, and yet which would not be it without us, and which thus needs to be augmented by our own being. Our relation with being involves a double sense, the first according to which we belong to it, the second according to which it belongs to us.

I can never say 'I' absolutely.

Are the limits between the ''inside'' and the "outside" so clear?

Self and other are not two distinct substances...We are both, other and self, two variables of the same system.

The positive and the negative are the two 'sides' of a Being; in the vertical world, every being has this structure (To this structure is bound the ambiguity of the consciousness...of imperception in perception...). Against the doctrine of contradiction, absolute negation, the either or--Transcendence is identity within difference.

Institution of a work, like the institution of a love, intends a sense as open sense, which develops by means of proliferation, by curves, decentering and recenterimg, zigzag, ambiguous passage, with a sort of identity between the whole and the parts, the beginning and end. A sort of existential eternity by means of self-interpretation.

Rather than imprisoning it, language is like a magic machine for transporting the 'I' into the other person's perspective.

The child and adult reflect each other like two mirrors endlessly placed face to face. The child that we believe exists is the reflection we desire. We are all indissolubly tied to the fact that the other is facing us the way we are facing him.

The psychology of men and women in our civilization does not signal an eternal masculine or feminine...We must not...consider the attributes of the woman or the man as natural, but as historical.

My clothes can become appendages of my body.

It is impossible to separate the child from cultural influences; rather, it is a false problem.

Does it not occur to people that I might be artificial by nature?

Why become a second-rate Ravel when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?

In fact, I argue that the future of advertising, whatever the technology, will be to associate each brand with one word. This is one word equity. It's the modern equivalent of having the best site on the high street, except the location is in the mind.

People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they'll spend all day telling you who they are.

The most fundamental thing about a person is desire. It defines them. Tell me what a person wants, truly wants, and I'll tell you who they are, and how to persuade them.

Elizabeth is smart, ruthless, and emotionally damaged ... [i]f Elizabeth's brain was a person, it would have scars, tattoos, and be missing one eye.

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a whole flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.

over and over, you would like to be recognized according to your own self, your own person, your own heart's inclination-but they always ask only what you have done, and really, if you look at it rationally, they have nothing else by which they can judge your state of mind except the manifestations of that state of mind.

Notice I did not say what people can do--what we can do is merely a consequence of what we can be.

One of the men he worked with was Horsethief Willy. Big Boy was very fond of him. A lot of his ideas on life originated with this man who had once been accused of stealing a horse. They didn't prove the charge, but he got a nickname for life.

Every uniform corrupts one's character.

You can put anything into words, except your own life