Quotes About Identity

Never compromise yourself. You are all you've got.

After they see me, when their mothers are feeding them all that cashmere sweater and girdle ----- [expletive deleted by the New York Times], maybe they'll have a second thought - that they can be themselves and win.

Don't compromise yourself - you are all you've got.

Don't compromise yourself, you're all you've got.

Never compromise yourself..your all you got

I carry the landscape inside me like an ache. The story of who I am cannot be severed from the story of the flatwoods.

Turning back to embrace the past has been a long, slow lesson not only in self-esteem, but in patriotism—pride in homeland, heritage. It has taken a decade to whip the shame, to mispronounce words and shun grammar when mispronunciation and misspeaking are part of my dialect, to own the bad blood. What I come from has made me who I am.

Although I was reared on a junkyard by parents who did not waste time hiking or camping, I knew pine trees and pitcher plants, bobcats and brown thrashers, as my people.

Words are big. They define who you are. They are permanent. I don't think most people realize that. What you say is who you are. So try to be gentle on social media. Lift others up when you can, even if you don't agree with what they have to say. Don't always turn your words into weapons when you can just as easily make them doves.

I thought of her as my mother, but rarely of myself as her daughter.

The soul of a child is as complicated and full of contradictions as our soul is.

The greatest sacrifice a man can make is the image of his soul.

This is the core claim of populism: only some of the people are really the people. Think of Nigel Farage celebrating the Brexit vote by claiming that it had been a "victory for real people" (thus making the 48 percent of the British electorate who had opposed taking the UK out of the European Union somehow less than real—or, put more directly, questioning their status as proper members of the political community).

Tigers die and leave their skins; people die and leave their names.

I didn't want any surprises; I churlishly thought if I revealed my Judaism at McDonald's, I would somehow be protected by the friendly American forces of crispy chicken sandwiches and supersized French fries.

I wasn't aware of my dad being an actor when I was young. I remember there was an Australian children's entertainer on television called Ralph Harris and when I'd say my father was an actor, kids would say, you know, 'oh, is he Ralph Harris?' And I had to say no and then they would lose interest.

Across the political spectrum, Americans assert that any form of white racial consciousness or solidarity is despicable. Whites, therefore, have tried to keep their end of the civil rights bargain. They have dismantled and condemned their own racial identity in the expectation that others will do the same.

If immigration and diversity bring cultural enrichment, why do whites move out of those very parts of the country that are being "enriched"?

Although immigration is likely to reduce whites to a minority in just a few decades, racial etiquette requires that whites must not think of this as anything but an exciting prospect.

Racial identity can be condemned, fought, ignored, or cultivated, but it is unrealistic for a society to pretend it does not exist.

A]s I stepped over the curb, I became excruciatingly aware of my skin color, and my heart pounded with social anxiety. In going around a single block, I got stares. Mine was the only white face around, and for five minutes, five blocks from my home, I was a stranger in a strange land. . . .

Something else that does no good is the constant proliferation of black subgroups. As soon as blacks join an organization, they band together into a racially exclusive subgroup. The doors of mainly white organizations are open to them, but their organizations are closed to whites. By any definition, this is racial discrimination.

This book is about racial identity, something most people who are not white take for granted. They come to it early, feel it strongly, and make no apologies for it.

It is difficult to think of diversity as a strength when Old Glory is treated as gang colors.