Personal Identity Quotes

• Personal identity seems like it's just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' to Jay Gatsby in 'The Great Gatsby.' It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue. If you're given the freedom to be anything, or be anyone, what do you do with it?

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Issues, Hollies, Identity

  Interview with TashaR, www.avclub.com. November 13, 2002.

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• The disciple is rich not in possessions, but in personal identity.

  Oswald Chambers

  Identity, Rich, Possession

  Oswald Chambers (2015). “Approved Unto God / Facing Reality”, p.26, Discovery House

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• To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Strong, Identity, Idle

  "Words of Wisdom and Quotable Quote" by Dr. A.N. P. Ummerkutty, p. 77, August, 2005.

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• The actor has a constant problem of personal identity.

  Cyril Cusack

  Growth, Identity, Actors

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  Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter.

  Bernard Baruch

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

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• Extreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vitality, and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Strong, Catholic, Identity

  1881 Virginibus Puerisque,'An Apology for Idlers'.

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• Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.

  Dr. Seuss

  Life, Smile, Graduation

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• Our citizens will lose their confidence or trust in the values and principles of the international community, especially if our personal identity is denied.

  Boris Trajkovski

  Confidence, Community, Identity

  "Man of Vision: Interview with the President Of the Republic of Macedonia Mr. Boris Trajkovski". "Macedonia: A Nation at a Crossroads" by Sam Vaknin, February 12, 2009.

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• I guess I'd like to have my cake and eat it, too. I want to be known for having a recognizable style. I believe having your own personal identity is what makes you competitive. On the other hand, I would like to be versatile and be challenged to go in new directions.

  Cliff Martinez

  Believe, Hands, Cake

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• One pits his wits against apparently inscrutable nature, wooing her with ardor but nature is blind justice who cannot recognize personal identity.

  Charles Brenton Huggins

  Justice, Identity, Pits

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• In every story I have heard, good teachers share one trait: a strong sense of personal identity infuses their work.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Strong, Teaching

  Parker J. Palmer, Megan Scribner (2007). “The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal”, p.104, John Wiley & Sons

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• Once you get below the floor of our personal identities, we're all connected. Perhaps that's why we can move into others' lives.

  Janet Fitch

  Moving, Identity, Connected

  Source: www.oprah.com

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• Writing is an act of hope. It means carving order out of chaos, of challenging one's own beliefs and assumptions, of facing the world with eyes and heart wide open. Through writing we declare a personal identity amid faceless anonymity. We find purpose and beauty and meaning even when the rational mind argues that none of these exist. Writing therefore, is also an act of courage. How much easier is it to lead an unexamined life than to confront yourself on the page?

  Jack Heffron

  Writing, Heart, Mean

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• After all, what is your personal identity? It is what you really are, your real self. None of us is what he thinks he is, or what other people think he is, still less what his passport says he is. And it is fortunate for most of us that we are mistaken. We do not generally know what is good for us. That is because, in St. Bernard's language, our true personality has been concealed under the 'disguise' of a false self, the ego, whom we tend to worship in place of God.

  Thomas Merton

  Real, Thinking, Self

  "Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for: Selected Spiritual Writings".

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• Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wide social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks

  Erving Goffman

  Identity, Cracks, World

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• Winning or losing an argument, receiving an acceptance or rejection, is no proof of the validity or value of personal identity. One may be wrong, mistaken, or a poor craftsman, or just ignorant - but this is no indication of the true worth of one's total human identity: past, present and future!

  Sylvia Plath

  Acceptance, Winning, Past

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.205, Anchor

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• Community cannot take root in a divided life. Long before community assumes external shape and form, it must be present as seed in the undivided self: only as we are in communion with ourselves can we find community with others. Community is an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, the flowing of personal identity and integrity into the world of relationships.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Integrity, Self, Roots

  Parker J. Palmer (2012). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.92, John Wiley & Sons

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• The search for a personal identity is the life task of a teenager.

  Haim Ginott

  Teenager, Identity, Tasks

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• The present age is demented. It is possessed by a sense of dislocation, a loss of personal identity, an alternating sentimentality and rage which, in an individual patient, could be characterized as dementia.

  Walker Percy

  Loss, Identity, Age

  Walker Percy (2011). “Signposts in a Strange Land”, p.165, Open Road Media

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• The emptiness I speak about is not the emptiness the mind imagines. It is not blank. Your body can continue expressing in a natural way. Intelligence is there. Emotions can come. Everything can play, but inside there is total serenity and peace. No planning, no strategising, no personal identity is there. Just the space of pure being. It is what we are, but we dream and believe we are not.

  Mooji

  Dream, Believe, Play

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• In the words of the late Francis Crick...You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. (13)

  Mary Roach

  Memories, Ambition, Science

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• There's that older poem of John Ashbery's-"America"-with the pun "I'm a wrecker," so wreckage and building out of the ashes of that. We're haunted by the genocide that is America, the decimation of so many native cultures. As a mix-blood European ancestry American, you're a nexus of all those violences, and yet there's a relative personal identity as well.

  Anne Waldman

  Blood, America, Identity

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• The more woman aims for personal identity and autonomy ... the fiercer will be her struggle with nature - that is, with the intractable physical laws of her own body. And the more nature will punish her: 'Do not dare to be free! For your body does not belong to you.'

  Camille Paglia

  Struggle, Law, Identity

  Camille Paglia (2018). “Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism”, p.37, Canongate Books

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• Wendy Doniger has spent decades collecting not only myths from ancient texts but stories of all kinds from novels, movies, newspapers about an old mystery: what has or hasn't happened in bed for centuries. Rich in insights about sex, lies, and personal identity, the result is entertaining, enthralling, and, yes, sexy.

  Roberto Calasso

  Sexy, Lying, Identity

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• In a time where the world is becoming personalized, when the mobile phone, the burger, everything has its own personal identity, how should we perceive ourselves and how should we perceive others?

  Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani

  Motivation, Inspiration, Phones

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