Quotes About Identity

Every man is what environment and heredity make him.

And perhaps I have tried too hard to be someone else without realizing at first what I presently am.

Now, two centuries after George IV appeared resembling a tartan dumpling, few formal occasions are kilt-free. Lowland bridegrooms and their male guests routinely put on the dress of men who were believed by their ancestors to be sub-human savages.

Our nation is the sum of Scandinavian Scotland, Pictish Scotland, Irish Scotland, English Scotland and British Scotland.

Alistair Moffat

Well, it will continue until the destruction of its cause". "And what is that, Sir?" "The way we identify with our body as the doer of action. And this lifelong habit is only destroyed by knowing oneself to be the bodiless Self. This is why it is said that knowledge is the fire that reduces karma to ashes".

There is a difference between the facts of a person and the truth of him.

My nose is a bridge between East and West. My little eye is a wink from God.

You will get to where you are going by remembering who you are…

Individuality, therefore, harbours its own enemy at home.'2

American Nihilism is a mood; a mood of moodiness; a vague disquiet. It is Nihilism without the abyss.

What poor substitutes for real diversity are the wild rainbows of dyed hair and other external differences that tell the observer nothing about what is inside.

The self is the modern substitute for the soul.

People are tagged with other labels that point to the lowest-status group they belong to, as in "woman doctor" or "black writer," but never "white lawyer" or male senator". Any category that lowers our status relative to others' can be used to mark us; to be privileged is to go through life with the relative ease of being unmarked.

The more powerful a woman is under patriarchy, the more 'unsexed' she becomes in the eyes of others as her female cultural identity recedes beneath the mantle of male-identified power and the masculine images associated with it. With men the effect is just the opposite: the more powerful they are, the more aware they are of their manhood. In other words, in a patriarchal culture, power looks sexy on men but not on women.

Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape.

He, the true writer, is the department store dummy at the very center of the whole establishment, the one left alone on display all night, a price tag stapled to every piece of clothing they've yanked onto him, binoculars and frog flippers included. He is the neutral, generic human form, the gray center who must always assume disguises — in order to be seen and, therefore, to feel himself.

We're in America; why do I have to "Press 1" for English?

I have no idea what my great-grandparents looked or sounded like, or the great-greats before them, back to caveman days. It's weird to think they were like me once, goofing with friends, mad at their parents, brave, scared, everything. But now they're gone too, and nobody knows or cares. So why do I make myself miserable over things that years from now no one will even care about? If I knew that, maybe I could be happy.

I have chosen not to name any particular ship because its identity is not relevant to my story. The fact is that a ship was there. And for whatever reason, that ship did nothing.

Jeanne's sisters thought nothing of themselves.... Helen stayed up late in Brookline, baking. Lemon squares, and brownies, pecan bars, apple cake, sandy almond cookies. Alone in her kitchen, she wrapped these offerings in waxed paper and froze them in tight-lipped containers.... Helen was the baker of the family. What she felt could not be purchased. She grieved from scratch.

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

Just because I like to suck cock doesn't make me any less American than Jesse Helms.