Identity Quotes - Page 17

• Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Romantic, Famous Love, Best Love

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1989). “Conversations of German Refugees ; Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years, Or, The Renunciants”, p.296, Princeton University Press

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• We are reduced to asking others what we are. We never dare to ask ourselves.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Asking, Dare, Asks

  "Discourse on Inequality". Book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1754.

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• The member of a primitive clan might express his identity in the formula "I am we"; he cannot yet conceive of himself as an "individual," existing apart from his group.

  Erich Fromm

  Responsibility, Independence, Groups

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Sane Society Ils 252”, p.61, Routledge

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• One of the many, many things I hate about war is how it trivializes the personal. The big themes, the broad sweep, the emergency measures, the national identity, all the things that a particular kind of man with a particular kind of power urge adores, these are the things that become important. War gives the lie to the personal, drowns it in meetings, alarms, sacrifices. The personal is only allowed to return as death.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Lying, Hate, War

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• Radical changes of identity, happening suddenly and in very brief intervals of time, have proved more deadly and destructive of human values than wars fought with hardware weapons.

  Marshall McLuhan

  War, Weapons, Radical Change

  "Laws of Media: The New Science". Book by Marshall McLuhan, co-written with Eric McLuhan, p.97, 1988.

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• Huck Finn. Loss of identity drives people to nostalgia. Electronic man has no physical body, so he [Jimmy Carter] puts nostalgia in its place.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Loss, Men, People

  "McLuhan's last words". "New Scientist" Magazine, January 29, 1981.

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• Any loss of identity prompts people to seek reassurance and rediscovery of themselves by testing, and even by violence. Today, the electric revolution, the wired planet, and the information environment involve everybody in everybody to the point of individual extinction.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Loss, People, Violence

  "Letters of Marshall McLuhan" by Marshall McLuhan, (p. 514), 1987.

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• Today, every principle of identity is affected by fashion, precisely because of its potential to revert all forms to non-origin and recurrence. Fashion is always retro, but always on the basis of the abolition of the passé (the past): the spectral death and resurrection of forms. Its proper actuality (its 'up-to-dateness', its 'relevance') is not a reference to the present, but an immediate and total recycling.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Fashion, Past, Principles

  Jean Baudrillard (1993). “Symbolic Exchange and Death”, p.88, SAGE

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• This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before.

  Ayn Rand

  Miracle, Use, Anthem

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Anthem”, p.46, Xist Publishing

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• We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law?s treatment.

  David Mamet

  Ignorance, Law, Perfect

  David Mamet (2011). “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture”, p.74, Penguin

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• Try and travel with the eyes of the spirit wide open, and not too much factual information. To tune in, without reverence, idly -- but with real inward attention. It is to be had for the feeling, that mysterious sense of rapport, of identity with the ground. You can extract the essence of a place once you know how. If you just get as still as a needle you'll be there.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Travel, Real, Eye

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• Part of America's genius has always been its ability to absorb newcomers, to forge a national identity out of the disparate lot that arrived on our shores.

  Barack Obama

  America, Genius, Newcomers

  Barack Obama (2007). “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”, p.231, Canongate Books

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• The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the dragqueen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all other dragqueens; like the functionalist, he has an identity - a female; he tries to define all his troubles away - but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he's a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made feminine stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms.

  Valerie Solanas

  Insecure, Men, Individuality

  Valerie Solanas (1971). “SCUM manifesto”

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• My approach to acting now is so different -- I'm fearless because I have nothing to lose. Before [children] my identity was wrapped up in every decision -- now, I don't care.

  Jessica Alba

  Children, Decision, Fearless

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• Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act... a "doing" rather than a "being". There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results. If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.

  Judith Butler

  Sex, Character, Expression

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• What is important to me in my work is the identity that is hidden behind so-called reality. I search for a bridge from the given present tot the invisible, rather as a famous cabalist once said, 'If you wish to grasp the invisible, penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible'.

  Max Beckmann

  Reality, Bridges, Wish

  "On my painting". Max Beckmann's Speech during the exhibition 'Twentieth-Century German Art', London, July 21, 1938.

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• We strive all the time to give our life its form, but we do so by copying willy-nilly, like a drawing, the features of the person that we are and not of the person we should like to be.

  Marcel Proust

  Drawing, Giving, Copying

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume III: The Guermantes Way”, p.236, Modern Library

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• You cannot spend your life wanting to be someone else, snipping off pieces of yourself you don't like, and suddenly expect, upon reaching a goal, to be confident, self-accepting, rooted like an oak tree in your being.

  Geneen Roth

  Self, Goal, Tree

  Geneen Roth (1997). “Appetites: On the Search for True Nourishment”, p.147, Penguin

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• What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity.

  David Hume

  Perfect, Simplicity, Perception

  David Hume (2015). “A Treatise of Human Nature: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.163, 谷月社

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• This story of loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature.

  Northrop Frye

  Loss, Thinking, Stories

  Northrop Frye (1964). “The Educated Imagination”, p.55, Indiana University Press

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• Daily life is a comprimised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes. ...Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism, and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence.

  E. O. Wilson

  Self, Class, Role Playing

  "On Human Nature". Book by E. O. Wilson, 1978.

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• Both art and the artist lack identity and define themselves only through their encounter with each other.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Artist, Encounters

  "Art & Other Serious Matters" by Harold Rosenberg, University of Chicago Press, (p. 155), 1985.

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• By practice and conviction formed, With ancient stubbornness ingrained, Although her body clung and swarmed, My own identity remained.

  Yvor Winters

  Practice, Body, Ancient

  Yvor Winters (1978). “The collected poems of Yvor Winters”, Swallow Pr

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• What is my identity ?" "Nothing," said the Master. "You mean that I am an emptiness and a void?" said the incredulous disciple. "Nothing that can be labeled." said the Master.

  Anthony de Mello

  Mean, Void, Emptiness

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• Women's liberation and the male midlife crisis were the same search--for personal fulfillment, common values, mutual respect, love. But while women's liberation was thought of as promoting identity, the male midlife crisis was thought of as an identity crisis.

  Warren Farrell

  Males, Midlife, Common

  Warren Farrell (1994). “The myth of male power: why men are the disposable sex”

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