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Identity Quotes

Browse 4512 quotes about Identity.

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Identity Quotes

“I don't want it to end, and so, as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end to its “problems” because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWantGivingFeelsDoeI CanEndsSelfMatterStoriesProblemSpiritualFateIdentityEgoSorryDefinitionsTreatedTherapistsSad StoryTreated Unfairly
Author:Eckhart Tolle
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“To be ourselves we must have ourselves – possess, if need be re-possess, our life-stories. We must “recollect” ourselves, recollect the inner drama, the narrative, of ourselves. A man needs such a narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain his identity, his self.”

IfsMenNeedsSelfStoriesOur LivesIdentityDramaNarrativeLife Story
Book:The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Picador Classic
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“There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges--the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.”

HumansLightEvilDarknessIdentityPlanetsVictimBlameRealizationUnconsciousnessPerpetratorsTrue Power
Book:A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
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“Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them.”

WorldWayHumansHuman BeingsIdentityMoralityEasierOffersIllusionDignityIdeology
Book:The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe
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“Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. It is also insane.”

WantPersonsHardDoneFormLevelsCommonIdentityAngryDenyInsaneUnconsciousPhenomenonNegativityLet It GoSabotagePositive Change
Book:The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
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“For an instant she felt them, their identities, almost their substance, pass over her head like a wave. At some time she would be — or no, already she was like that too; she was one of them, her body the same, identical, merged with that other flesh that choked the air in the flowered room with its sweet organic scent; she felt suffocated by this thick sargasso-sea of femininity.”

BodyWould BeFeltRoomsAirSeaIdentitySweetWaveFleshSubstanceInstantThickScentFemininityIdentical
Book:The edible woman ; Surfacing ; Lady oracle
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“It is madness. And if you don't know who you are, or if your real self has drifted away from you with the undertow, madness at least gives you an identity. It's the same with self-loathing. You're probably just normal and normal-looking but that's not a real identity, not the way ugliness is. Normality, just accepting that you're probably normal-looking, lacks the force field of self-disgust. If you don't know who you are, madness gives you something to believe in.”

IfsKnowsWayGivingBelieveRealSelfForceAcceptingFieldsIdentityNormalMadnessWho You AreDisgustingUglinessLoathingAway From YouSelf LoathingNormalityReal SelfForce FieldsUndertow
Book:Your Voice in My Head
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“We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.”

PeopleDifferentDreamAmericaBeautifulCultureBeliefBlackDifferencesAtheismIdentityDiversityPresidentialPotYearningMulticulturalismDifferent PeoplesMeltingMulticulturalUnity In DiversityCultural DiversityCultural DifferencesMelting PotUs PresidentMosaicsPresidents DayHopes DreamsInspirational DiversityGreat DiversityInspiring PresidentialDiversity Of LifeTolerance And DiversityDifferent Beliefs
Author:Jimmy Carter
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“Not to know one's true identity is to be a mad, disensouled thing — a golem. And, indeed, this image, sick-eningly Orwellian, applies to the mass of human beings now living in the high-tech industrial democracies. Their authenticity lies in their ability to obey and follow mass style changes that are conveyed through the media. Immersed in junk food, trash media, and cryp-tofascist politics, they are condemned to toxic lives of low awareness. Sedated by the prescripted daily television fix, they are a living dead, lost to all but the act of consuming.”

KnowsHumansLyingLostHuman BeingsAbilityDemocracyAwarenessMediaStyleIdentityTelevisionMassLowsSickMadAuthenticityToxicTrashConsumingJunkJunk FoodOrwellianTrue Identity
Author:Terence McKenna
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“I lean over you, your equal, offering you a mirror for your perfect nothingness, for your shadows which are neither light nor absence of light, for this void which contemplates. To all that which you are, and, for our language, are not, I add a consciousness. I make you experience your supreme identity as a relationship, I name you and define you. You become a delicious passivity.”

LightNamesLanguagePerfectConsciousnessIdentityEqualShadowMirrorsAddAbsenceSupremeOver YouVoidOfferingContemplatingNothingnessDeliciousPassivityDefine You
Author:Maurice Blanchot
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“Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don't think about it - don't let the feeling turn into thinking. Don't judge or analyze. Don't make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of "the one who observes," the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens.”

ThinkingKnowsFeelingsBodyHappensPainTurnsAttentionAcceptingFocusAwarenessIdentityEmotionalJudgingHappeningsConsciousSilentObserversEmotional PainPower Of NowWatchers
Book:Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises from the Power of Now
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“Here and gone. That’s what it is to be human, I think—to be both someone and no one at once, to hold a particular identity in the world (our names, our place of origins, our family and affectional ties) and to feel that solid set of ties also capable of dissolution, slipping away, as we become moments of attention.”

ThinkingWorldFeelsHumansMomentsNamesAttentionGoneIdentityParticularCapableOur FamilyTiesSlippingDissolutionSlipping Away
Book:Still Life with Oysters and Lemon
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“Have you thought about what it means to be a god?" asked the man. He had a beard and a baseball cap. "It means you give up your mortal existence to become a meme: something that lives forever in people's minds, like the tune of a nursery rhyme. It means that everyone gets to re-create you in their own minds. You barely have your own identity any more. Instead, you're a thousand aspects of what people need you to be. And everyone wants something different from you. Nothing is fixed, nothing is stable.”

PeopleMenWantNeedsGivingMindMeanDifferentExistenceForeverIdentityThousandGiving UpAspectBaseballMortalsFixedTunesNurseStableRhymeWant SomethingNeed YouBeardCapsNurseryMemesNursery RhymesBaseball Caps
Author:Neil Gaiman
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“I have become a collapsing star, pulling everything around it, even the light, into an ever-expanding void. Once I lose all ability to communicate with the world outside myself, nothing will be left but what I remember. My memories will be like a sandbar, cut off from the shore by the incoming tide. In time they will become submerged, inaccessible to me. The prospect terrified me. For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.”

WorldPersonsLightPastRememberLeftStarsLosesMemoriesAbilityCuttingIdentityCommunicateGhostShoreVoidTidesTrappedPullingTerrifiedExpandingInaccessibleSubmergedAbility To Communicate
Book:The Garden of Evening Mists
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“When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique. He is universal by virtue of the inseparability of his organism from the cosmos. He is unique in that he is just this organism and not any stereotype of role, class, or identity assumed for the convenience of social communication.”

MenGivenSocialClassRolesVirtueIdentityCommunicationUniqueUniversalDefinitionsCosmosOrganismsStereotypeConvenience
Book:Psychotherapy East & West
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“The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own. Injuring, hurting, killing, drinking are all part of it, because you've lost your identity, because you now owe your allegiance to this thing that's bigger than you are and that controls you.”

GivingHumanityNamesIndividualLostHurtGroupsIdentityGiving UpBiggerDrinkingKillingSakeSurrenderToxicAllegiance
Author:George Carlin
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“Depression is about anger, it's about anxiety, it's about character and heredity. But it is also about something that is in its way quite unique. It is the illness of identity, it is the illness of those who do not know where they fit, who lose faith in the myths they have so painstakingly created for themselves. It is a plague - especially if you add in its various forms of expression, like alcoholism, anorexia, bulimia, drug addiction, compulsive behavior of one kind or another. They're all the same things: attempts to avoid disappearance, or nothingness, or chaos.”

IfsKnowsWayKindCharacterFormLosesIdentityExpressionFitDrugDepressionBehaviorAnxietyUniqueAddChaosAddictionIllnessVariousMythNothingnessPlagueAlcoholismAnorexiaDrug AddictionDrug AddictDisappearanceBulimiaHeredity
Author:Tim Lott
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“In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you.”

PeopleIfsInspirationalFirstsLooksTwoMotivationalThreeEnergyBusinessEducationQualityIdentityIntegrityIntelligenceHypocrisyWholenessHiringBuffetsIntegrity And CharacterIntegrity CharacterHonor And IntegrityKnowledge Of The WorldTrust And RespectLeadership IntegrityPersonal IntegrityEthics And IntegrityEmployee InspirationalMoral IntegrityMorals And Integrity
Author:Warren Buffett
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“Any classification according to a singular identity polarizes people in a particular way, but if we take note of the fact that we have many different identities - related not just to religion but also to language, occupation and business, politics, class and poverty, and many others - we can see that the polarization of one can be resisted by a fuller picture. So knowledge and understanding are extremely important to fight against singular polarization.”

PeopleIfsWayImportantDifferentFactsFightingLanguageUnderstandingClassPovertyKnowledgeIdentityParticularDiversityNotesRelatedOccupationBrotherhoodUnity In DiversityClassificationPolarizationKnowledge And Understanding
Author:Amartya Sen
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“Only in Relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction and certainly not in isolation. The movement of behavior is the sure guide to yourself. It's the mirror of your consciousness; this mirror will reveal its content, the images, the attachments, the fears, the loneliness, the joy and sorrow. Poverty lies in running away from this, either in its sublimations or its identities.”

KnowsLoveLifeTruthRunningJoyLyingConsciousnessPovertyRelationshipLonelinessMovementIdentitySorrowBehaviorMirrorsGuidesIsolationAttachmentRunning AwayAbstractionKnow YourselfJoys And Sorrows
Author:Jiddu Krishnamurti
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“One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.”

ThinkingInspirationalHumansEyeBlackCommunityFreedomHuman BeingsInspiringAttentionIdentityAmountOne DayShapesUniqueSkinsPrejudicePaidComplexesIncrediblesGenderBlack HistoryDescendantsBeing FreeBlack History MonthBlack History Month InspirationalAnti RacistBlack History InspirationalMelaninBlack InspirationalBlack RacismHuman DiversityBlack SkinRacism And PrejudiceDiscrimination And Racism
Author:Franklin A. Thomas
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