Quotessence
Home / Topics / Personal Identity Quotes

Personal Identity Quotes

Browse 73 quotes about Personal Identity.

Personal Identity Quotes

“We proceeded to make way across the mighty Hooghly River, a monstrous offshoot of the Ganges, where we contemplated for a moment, our thoughts seemingly caught in the roaring southward current; there we gazed, toward where the city transitions into mangrove jungle, and somewhere a bit further to the southwest where all the rivers split infinitely like capillaries, where those famous Bengal tigers trod among the sunderbans. Peering in that direction, Bajju gripped the vertical bars just above the horizontal pedestrian railing, breathing slowly and silently, knees locked, still, despite being on arguably the busiest and loudest bridge in the world.”

PhilosophyLife LessonsPoetryIdentityFriendshipsTeachingsPersonal IdentityPolitical HistoryFind OneselfUniversal Values
Book:The Local School
Create image

“Of course, I couldn’t explain this vector calculus concept and so, slightly embarrassed in front of Rahul and the other Bengali students, I told Sanjit just that; he had cornered me, and honesty emerged as my only option. Simultaneous to my humiliating disclosure of the truth, Sanjit gradually inched toward where I was sitting. After hearing my reply, he slowly returned to his teacher stool and whiteboard, his back turned away from the class, the suspense building and his words impending, before turning around and breaking into speech, “Don’t trust your interior monologue. If you are asked something and you know it, then express or demonstrate it. Don’t just nod or say yes because then you are lying to yourself. Any ass can say yes, but not all asses can express it.” I modified my first impression: Sanjit was full of explicit aphorisms. Humbled, those words encouragingly rang between my ears for quite some time.”

PhilosophyLife LessonsPoetryIdentityFriendshipsTeachingsPersonal IdentityPolitical HistoryFind OneselfUniversal Values
Book:The Local School
Create image

“Helen dared to look up without being invited to do so. “I cannot thank you enough for your kindness, Lady Consort.” “Kindness had nothing to do with it. You have skills and training I need just now, and I intend to use you shamelessly, and expose you to greater danger.” “Get in line, Lady Consort,” Helen replied. “Danger-filled usury seems to be a holiday pastime in this city.” The Consort stopped pretending to do her needlework. “I could have you whipped for such insolence, girl.” “Before or after you use me.”

DespairSpeculative FictionLove TriangleGood Vs EvilPersonal IdentityReluctant HeroMystical RealmsSocietal RebellionDystopian UndertonesMixed Race Identity
Book:Stoneslayer: Book One Scandal
Create image

“I have argued that when we encounter other humans we experience them first as persons, and cannot help but do so. This means that in order to see a human person as an animal or organism we must abstract from the totality of our experience. My suggestion is that we take this fact seriously in understanding the ontology of everyday objects. According to this proposal a “human animal” or “human organism” is not a thing in its own right, but rather a particular perspective we take on ourselves and our lives, one that attends only to our purely biological functions.”

PhilosophyIdentityHumanHuman AnimalPersonal Identity
Book:Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life
Create image

“The ongoing struggle to achieve a profound harmony between the deepest and most conflicting impulses of human beings instates the murkiness of my soul. The battle against the amorphousness of sin and depravity, and seeking unity and clarity, trace their origins to the primeval fire that launched humanity. This ancient warfare for control of the soul allows me to create myself. Because of the primordial inconsistences between ecstasy and reason, I am the repentant artist of my being. I am a beardless, sensuous, and androgynous sculptor, the redeemer and the transformer of my naked self.”

SoulHumanitySinStruggleHuman NatureIdentityConflictTransformationHarmonyEcstasySelf DeterminationSoul SearchingDepravityPersonal IdentityConflicting EmotionsEcstasy Of Life
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“It is here where education is championed and gratefully pursued as the human right which many in our world classify it to be. For although regarded as a human right, many entitled to education often dismiss its equal standing to other rights of a similar plane: water, food, shelter. Without water, many perish; with education, many complain.”

LifePoetryLearningValueJournalTeachingsTruthsPersonal IdentityPolitical HistoryIndian Education
Book:The Local School
Create image

“All forms of writing are an act of conception; writing must lead to creation. Each time that we write, we begin again. Writing is an act of self-affirmation. Each time that we place our thoughts onto paper, we receive a new opportunity to claim our reality. Writing is also an act of explication and deconstruction. Writing empowers us to shape and modify our fiery constitutions. Writing allows us to explore the essential ingredients that lead to a life of serenity by exhibiting compassion, love, patience, generosity, and forgiveness.”

WritingMemoriesCompassionSelf ImprovementForgivenessPatienceSelf DiscoveryMemoirSelf RealizationGenerosityWritersSelf AcceptanceSerenitySelf KnowledgeWriters On WritingWriting LifeKnow ThyselfMemoirsSelf Awareness QuotesSelf KnowingWriting MemoirPersonal IdentitySelf Knowledge QuotesSelf Acceptance QuotesSelf AffirmationSelf Aw
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Selfhood allows a person to hold a sense of a personal narrative comprising of a sequential autobiography of his or her life experiences. Selfhood embraces a social identity, a moral identity, emotional identity, behavioral identity, and an ethical identity. Selfhood comprises other feelings related to self-esteem. Selfhood entails numerous personal assessments and its spackled span includes evaluation of a person’s abilities in relation to other people. Selfhood includes comparing and rating a person’s level of intelligence, personality quirks, and physical powers with respect to other people. It also encompasses a personal image of a person’s body type, and a lengthily list of other observable facts including assessing a person’s comparative physical, mental, and psychological strengths and deficits.”

SelfIdentitySelf AwarenessSelf DeterminationSelf ConceptSelf AssurancePersonal IdentityIdentity QuotesSelfhoodPersonal Image
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Some prejudices and fallacies of the human mind are understandable on a theoretical basis, but practically impossible to implement. As matters now stand, I have little choice but to recognize myself as possessing a personal state of conscious awareness and presupposing that my active state of mental awareness constitutes a personal identity. Acknowledgement of my ignorance begins with the opening admission that the concept of a self delineates the most that I will ever understand in life. Although it might be a spectacular illusion to perceive the self as the unchanging nucleus at the center of my being, from a human evolutionary standpoint and to develop and carryout strategies necessary for personal survival it is a useful illusion. Belief in a self allows a person to integrate streams of information and resolve conflicts between competing values and goals. Absence of a self-identity and devoid of the specific goal of seeking personal self-realization, would not only jeopardize human survival on a daily bases, but it would render life utterly meaningless, making a person’s ontological existence a triviality. Lacking a philosophical status of fundamental ontological event, human life would be a windowless absurdity. A person must perceive oneself as an actual entity in physical Minkowski space, not merely as a philosophical concept in order to engage in the necessary activities to perpetuate personal existence and import meaning to personal efforts. Accordingly, I elect to perceive the self as an actual entity, not as a mere abstraction, composed of a single, definite set of well-defined ontological criteria. Self-perception guides future behavioral choices, frame intellectual inquires, and the evolution of the self represents the ultimate level of personal achievement in pursuit of my goal of attaining self-realization.”

SelfIdentitySelf AwarenessSelf RealizationSelf Realization QuotesSelf IdentityPersonal IdentitySelfhoodSelf RecognitionSelf Identification
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“After Bajju delivered a few beaming salutations, we walked northward up the makeshift, winding path through protruding brush, not much but a few stones placed here and there for balance and leverage upon ascending or descending. Having advanced about hundred steps from the street below, a sharp left leads to Bajju’s property, which begins with his family’s miniature garden – at the time any signs of fertility were mangled by dried roots which flailed like wheat straw, but within the day Bajju’s children vehemently delivered blows with miniature hoes in preparation for transforming such a plot into a no-longer-neglected vegetable garden. A few steps through the produce, or preferably circumventing all of it by taking a few extra steps around the perimeter, leads to the sky-blue painted home. Twisting left, hundreds of miles of rolling hills and the occasional home peeps out, bound below by demarcated farming steppes. If you’re lucky on a clear day and twist to the right, the monstrous, perpetually snow-capped Chaukhamba mountain monopolizes the distance just fifteen miles toward the direction of Tibet in the north.”

Life LessonsPoetryValueJournalTeachingsPersonal IdentityPolitical HistoryFind OneselfIndian EducationPhilosoph
Book:The Local School
Create image

“Sanjit says his apartment, the same one in which he grew up, has been flooded many times by the midsummer torrents. For what has been for millennia a primarily agricultural society, rains simultaneously destroy, create, and preserve life in India, similar to the functions of the three premier Hindu gods, Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu. Every time Kolkata gets pounded by a cyclone, or when the monsoon first erupts in June (although the recent warming of the Indian Ocean increasingly disturbs a once-consistent timeline), Sanjit never fails to send along a video, his house flooded – seemingly destroyed – but the smiles on his, Bajju’s, or other house-guest’s faces signify just the opposite, having been cooled and relieved of perpetual heat. Flooded, they remain preserved.”

PoetryValueJournalTeachingsTruthsPersonal IdentityPolitical HistoryFind OneselfIndian Education
Book:The Local School
Create image

“We must live a genuine life in order to discover personal happiness and self-fulfillment. Understanding that a person is living a lie is the first step into realizing what is possible. No matter how frightful such a proposition is, we must dare to be an original self.”

HappinessSelf DiscoverySelf RealizationHappiness QuotesHappiness QuotePersonal IdentitySelf Discovery QuotesSelf FulfillmentPersonal Improvement
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Our genetic map makes us human. Our physical and emotional genomes establish the baseline for us to operate. When we strike out in the world, we seek out vivid encounters with other people and nature that speak loudest to ourselves. What we make of our brilliant experiences modulates who we become. The way we think, feel, and express emotions enables us to personalize our experiences.”

Self RealizationSelf DeterminationExperiencesMemoir WritingWriting MemoirPersonal IdentityStory Of Your LifePersonal ExperienceVision Quest
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Self-image is the product of our very own spin machine. Revolutions of long-term memories and the gyrations of short-term thoughts fabricate the epicycle of our present self-image. Once a synchronized self-image is developed, the human mind exhibits a tenacious tendency to maintain that centralized self-image through selective recall of prior events and by displaying a corresponding perception bias in interpreting present day experiences. In short, once we come to a firm belief of what we are, we exercise various mental and emotional prejudices to confirm and sustain our self-image.”

IdentityMindsetSelf DeterminationMind PowerSelf ImageSelf TransformationSelf IdentitySelf ConceptPersonal IdentityPersonal Image
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“We are always coming into being. If our beings are subject to chances and choices, then there are numerous potential permutations for each one of us. We are capable of many things, and of those tasks within the scope of our innate reach, we will probably only realize a small percentage of successes. It is crucially important that we make the best decisions we can and efficiently utilize our allotted time to make the most out of our lives. While we do not control every aspect of our ultimate destiny, we can certainly waste our life on frivolities. Alternatively, we can work resolutely with passion and purpose and by doing so place a premium value upon a life that is otherwise utterly absurd. Human beings can use thoughts to direct free will in order to exert control over our personal attitude and behavior, monitor what we say and how we behave, and determine whom we associate with and whom we avoid. Human free will allows us deliberately to determine what subjects we wish to study and what theories we desire actively to integrate into our lives.”

Self RealizationFree WillSelf DeterminationFreedom Of ThoughtFreedom Of ChoiceSelf TransformationSelf IdentityPersonal IdentitySelf TranscendenceSelfhood
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“An argument can be made that while all people are born and die and during their lifetime they will lead almost identical lives devoted to fulfilling their will by eating, sleeping, procreating, taking care of their children, and building shelters. This still allows for innumerable personal decisions how to conduct our lives. For instance, identical twins share many physical traits but their personalities vary. How everybody reacts to a physical world, and the mental decisions that they make affects the trajectory of their life. Given the vast world that we must operate within our choices regarding how to live are only limited by our knowledge, ethics, abilities, imagination, and physical constraints. Accordingly, the outcome of our lives is not certain, fixed, ordained, or fated, but rather a mystery that we can assist pen with our conscious, deliberative actions. In other words, we might do what we do in certain situations because who we are, but we have some say in what we are.”

IdentityMemoirSelf RealizationFree WillSelf DeterminationMemoir WritingPersonal IdentityFree Will QuotesSelfhood
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Sometimes I wish I didn’t find my home in the depths. That I didn’t crave connection below the pretty surface of things. I've wished to be like all of “them”—the ones who live neat and tidy lives, not always asking questions or seeking more. Able to ignore the dull ache that speaks to places inside me that long to be seen. Performing a predecided role for external approval. Practiced at tucking away parts that don’t fit the prescribed notions for how one should be or act or feel or want or love or fuck or live. But that will never be me.”

AuthenticitySelf AcceptanceNon ConformityPersonal IdentityDeep ConnectionsInner LongingLiving TruthfullyFeeling Out Of PlaceRejection Of Societal NormsSeeking Deeper Meaning
Author:Jeanette LeBlanc
Create image

“What…defines a person as a unique individual? A natural disposition? A face? A vocabulary of gestures? Are we born individuals…or do we mold ourselves into unique creatures through our experiences and accomplishments? Every human enters the world with a vast, incalculable potential. But myriad factors invariably conspire to prevent us from fully achieving that potential.”

IdentityPersonalityPotentialMind And BodyHuman PotentialIdentity CrisisPersonal IdentityBody And Soul
Book:Upgrade Soul
Create image

“In addition to the often unsatisfactory cards dealt to us by heredity...each of us will, throughout our lives, suffer innumerable encounters with disease, injury, emotional trauma, and personal defeat. These stochastic encounters are cumulative, and many of them will even come to shape core parts of our beings. But are our identities inextricably linked to our imperfections, struggles and genetic blemishes?”

IdentityGeneticsHeredityImperfectionsPersonal IdentityCore Identity
Book:Upgrade Soul
Create image

“A sense of identity slowly but surely evolves when we experiment in the hub of life by consciously and unconsciously responding to the never-ending changes in our external world and as we develop our physical, emotional, and rational being. Periods of solitude assist a person identify the stealthy traits that a person surreptitiously acquired. Reflecting upon our personal experiences helps us comprehend the patterns of our nature that emerged, signs reveling what principles we most profoundly believe and what ethical obligations we value. Articulating a personal code of conduct acquaints a person with the single core of unity that formed in his or her subterranean mind, the persona that took shape while we immersed ourselves in the dark stream of self-identification.”

IdentitySelf AwarenessPersonal DevelopmentSelf DevelopmentSelf ImageSelf IdentitySelf ConceptPersonal IdentityPersonal ValuesCode Of Conduct
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“It is important to apprehend the full gamut of emotions that are available to all thinking, feeling, and compassionate human beings? Does self-love open a person’s gracious heart and mind enabling them generously to love and genially to care for other people? Without self-love, does a person lack the emotional quotient necessary to feel both genuine affection and empathy for our brethren? Must I commence a fundamental transformation of the self by eliminating a toxic dosage of self-hatred? Will newly discovered self-respect place me on the path towards obtaining personal enlightenment? Alternatively, is eliminating any concept of the self the fundamental charter that I must devote all days and nights to achieve?”

Self LoveSelf ImprovementTransformationPersonal GrowthTranscendenceCharacter BuildingSelf TransformationPersonal IdentitySelf TranscendencePersonal Improvement
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“We each pine to express our uniqueness. Is it absurd to take ourselves seriously, and resolutely search out a means to discover and express the story that plaits a modicum of coherent reality out of our existence? Is it ridiculous to garner joy from walking in the woods, spending dashes of time intermingling with family and friends, and by working unerringly at our jobs? Is it right to take solace in minor moments of wonder woven together similar to strands of wool in a familiar sweater? Can I wring joy from the snug encounters of daily living by participating in an interlinked web of community of life? Can I foster goodwill by saturating my heart in time-tested faith?”

IdentitySelf ExpressionMemoir WritingSelf IdentityWriting MemoirPersonal IdentitySelf IdentificationSelf Identity Crisis
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Who we are is an ongoing process of forging a personalized self-concept. Our childhood upbringing and our personal history as an adult formulates our identity. Identity spawns from the dewdrop of our crystalized experiences. Identify is partially formed by the places that claim us including places we resided and places we traveled. Identity is often closely associated with a person’s nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, occupation, age, and their abilities and special disabilities.”

IdentitySelf IdentitySelf ConceptPersonal IdentitySelf Identification
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“As I sat dumbfounded, seemingly paralyzed in my corner, resorting to my old, reliable strategy of scribbling when unsure of how to respond to Sanjit, Sanjit appended his counsel with a dose of silence – one reminiscent to that of a few days prior. The students looked upward and downward, fans to notes to pens to toes, outward and inward, peers to souls, and of course, toward the direction of the perceived elephant in the room, Sanjit’s books. Simultaneously, Sanjit confidently and patiently searched among the students before finding my eyes; once connected, the lesson moved forward.”

LifeSoulPoetryLearningValueJournalBettermentTruthsPersonal IdentityIndian Education
Book:The Local School
Create image

“Our remembered experiences and our present day hopes and desires form the spine of each person’s storybook. Knowledge of life and death are traceable facts that shape the contours of each person’s storyboard. Other truths gleaned from living brilliantly fill the pages of each person’s ongoing anthology.”

IdentityMemoirSelf KnowledgeMemoir WritingStory Of My LifeSelf IdentitySelf KnowingPersonal IdentitySelf Knowledge Quotes
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“In contrast, the gratification and education received from Sanjit’s classes is slow burning, personal, and in a changing world allegedly becoming more attuned to and obsessed with requiring that money spent – especially on education – must yield tangible results, what many would view as a paradoxical dynamic nevertheless persists there, near Park Circus, Kolkata. No grades, no forced accountability, all voluntary learning.”

LifePoetryLearningValueJournalTeachingsTruthsPersonal IdentityPolitical HistoryIndian Education
Book:The Local School
Create image

“Yet, the work was not complete. Next, citing Bond’s veranda and our subsequent construction of it as an example, Sanjit elaborated on the thought which he had previously teased, but not fully explained: that when a reader reads, the reader constructs a setting and world and is able to view themselves through this world. However, he also added that when we read, we are not only able to see our constructed world, but to evaluate our constructed world. This is how, Sanjit would argue, we influence and better ourselves, even if unintentionally; for by pausing and analyzing our constructions we may be able to identify our assumptions about people, places, or things. And it is in this way that books may be an expressed form of art, not just for the writer, but also for the reader.”

LifeSoulPoetryLearningValueJournalBettermentTruthsPersonal IdentityIndian Education
Book:The Local School
Create image

“Like the Pentagon, our social science often reduces all phenomena to dollars and body counts. Sexuality, family unity, kinship, masculine solidarity, maternity, motivation, nurturing, all the rituals of personal identity and development, all the bonds of community, seem "sexist," "superstitious," "mystical," "inefficient," "discriminatory." And, of course, they are -- and they are also indispensable to a civilized society.”

BodySeemsMotivationCoursesSocialCommunityIdentityDevelopmentDollarsUnitySexualityCivilizedRitualSolidarityMysticalIndispensableMasculineNurturingSuperstitiousSexistKinshipPentagonSocial ScienceCivilized SocietyMaternityPersonal Identity
Book:Sexual suicide
Create image

“After death the soul possesses self-consciousness, otherwise, it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the consciousness of personal identity.”

SoulSelfWould BeSpiritualConsciousnessSubjectsIdentityPersonalityRemainsAfter DeathSelf ConsciousnessPersonal IdentitySpiritual Death
Book:Delphi Collected Works of Immanuel Kant (Illustrated)
Create image