Quotes About Identity

And there is a paradox that many of you refuse to see: to get to a point where race won't make a difference, we have to wrestle, first, with the difference that race makes.

There's no point in swanning through and being cool as a breeze in every scene. It's not really that interesting. Even if you're a superhero.

Wake up! Don't let them control you. Don't let them impose an identity on you. Don't obey them. Never submit to a prophet or a holy book. Think for yourself. Wear what you like. Eat what you like. Pray when you like. Don't you want to be free rather than a slave? Create your own identity. Create yourself. Because only those who do can become God. Nietzsche, an atheist, came far closer to the True God than any follower of any mainstream religion.

If we see ourselves as alienated from God, we have a huge problem. That's exactly what the Abrahamic faiths do to us – they alienate us from who we really are, from our divine spark. Instead of making us search for God inside ourselves, they project God onto an external figure; remote, alien, infinitely high above humanity.

If you want to be a real person living in the real world, the first thing you must do is get off the grid. Take the first brave step and delete your Facebook profile. After all, you surely wouldn't want the words carved on your headstone to be: "I was registered with Facebook. I had 101 online friends (and I even knew a few of them). My current mood is: Sad.

You don't define yourself. The objects you own define you. Capitalism defines what objects you must have, so capitalism defines you. Why is it so hard to overthrow capitalism? – because it defines your identity. It literally objectifies you. Your identity is established not by who you are but by what you have. The objects you own are more important than your talents and your personality. Anyone defined by objects doesn't have any talents or personality.

Solitude increased my perception. But here's the tricky thing: when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. There was no audience, no one to perform for. There was no need to define myself. I became irrelevant. (I)solation felt more like communion...To put it romantically, I was completely free.

And right then, I come the closest I think I ever will to understanding why Knight left. He left because the world is not made to accommodate people like him. He was never happy in his youth -- not in high school, not with a job, not being around other people. It made him feel constantly nervous. There was no place for him, and instead of suffering further, he escaped. It wasn't so much a protest as a quest; he was like a refugee from the human race. The forest offered him shelter (p 182)

Solitude bestows an increase in something valuable. I can't dismiss that idea. Solitude increased my perception. But here's the tricky thing: when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. There was no audience, no one to perform for. There was no need to define myself. I became irrelevant.

But the label 'crazy' bothers me. Annoys me. Because it prevents response." When someone asks if you're crazy, Knight lamented, you can either say yes, which makes you crazy, or you can say no, which makes you sound defensive, as if you fear that you really are crazy. There's no good answer.

In public, one always wears a social mask, a presentation to the world. Even when you're alone and look in a mirror, you're acting, which is one reason Knight never kept a mirror in his camp. He let go of all artifice; he became no one and everyone.

My desires dropped away. I didn't long for anything. I didn't even have a name. To put it romantically, I was completely free.

This loss of self was precisely what Knight experienced in the forest. In public, one always wears a social mask, a presentation to the world. Even when you're alone and look in a mirror, you're acting, which is one reason Knight never kept a mirror in his camp. He let go of all artifice; he became no one and everyone.

Michael Finkel

There was no audience, no one to perform for. There was no need to define myself. I became irrelevant.

reaching through time and speaking directly to him: Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground. "I recognize myself

If you're born a human oddity, says the introductory chapter of Very Special People, every day of your life, starting in infancy, you are made aware that you are not as others are. When you get older, it continues, things are likely to get worse. You may hide from the world, advises the book, to avoid the punishment it inflicts on those who differ from the rest in mind or body.

If you look in the dictionary under 'white trash' there's a picture of my family." from BREAKFAST WITH NERUDA, p 37

Marxists interpreted everything in terms of class; Freudians in terms of childhood; and feminists in terms of gender.

screenings of the documentary about the Juderia made by Rebecca Samonà, the granddaughter of Victoria Sidis Licitri and Ernesto Licitri, who had turned to Stella for help understanding her family's unexplored past. On other evenings there were conversations, between Stella and her cousin Isabelle Levy; between Stella and her former neighbor,

Margrethe slips into history even as I turn back to Bohr. And yet how much more difficult still it is to catch the slightest glimpse of what's behind one's eyes. Here I am at the centre of the universe, and yet all I can see are two smiles that don't belong to me.

Ralph Fiennes

Tom Marvolo Riddle

Himself Holding A Pair Of Socks