2,562 Identity Quotes

If I say, 'I am a monk.' or 'I am a Buddhist,' these are, in comparison to my nature as a human being, temporary. To be human is basic.

What has changed is that my life then was less difficult and my future seemingly less gloomy, but as far as my inner self, my way of looking at things and of thinking is concerned, that has not changed. But if there has indeed been a change, then it is that I think, believe and love more seriously now what I thought, believed and loved even then.

What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

Customs form us all, our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed beliefs; are consequences of our place of birth.

This pride of race is a quality which the German, fundamentally, does not possess. The reason for this is that for these last three centuries the country has been torn by internal dissension and religious wars and has been subjected to a variety of foreign influences, to the influence, for example, of Christianity-for Christianity is not a natural religion for the Germans, but a religion that has been imported and which strikes no responsive chord in their hearts and is foreign to the inherent genius of the race. (13th February 1945)

The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously.

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.

I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.

Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist, as the Greeks believed. Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving? ... Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended.

We have to live and let live in order to create what we are.

I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.

The physicists say that I am a mathematician, and the mathematicians say that I am a physicist. I am a completely isolated man and though everybody knows me, there are very few people who really know me.

I don't think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we're someone else. I don't tell tall tales. I always tell the truth.

There is a splendour in my name hidden and glorious, as the sun of midnight is ever the son.

In my life, I don't need to have my face plastered everywhere. It's not really something I want.

Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

I am a deeply superficial person.

I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.

If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.

Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.

Acting is not pretending or lying. It's finding a side of yourself that's the character and ignoring your other sides. And there's a side of me that wonders what's wrong with being completely honest.

Man is the nobler growth our realms supply, And souls are ripened in our northern sky.

Vampires pretending to be humans pretending to be vampires ... How avant-garde!

Your quest is for darkness only. This sea is not your sea. The myths of men are not your myths. Men's treasures are not yours.

Once I returned to the Church and began to see the universe as a place that really did incorporate redemption and really tried to understand the implications of there being a God, my identification with the vampires as outcasts, as outsiders and lost souls began to totally wane. It no longer worked for me. I had done it. It had led me to this point.

To understand a man, you must know his memories. The same is true of a nation.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

You specialize in something until one day you find it is specializing in you.

The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is that you're a salesman, and you don't know that.

Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.

Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self. She is living selflessly, she finds a hole in the stone wall and on the other side of the wall, a voice. The voice comes through darkness and has no face. This voice becomes her mirror.

I love the word 'faggot,' because it describes my kind of guy! You see, I am a fag hag. Fag hags are the backbone of the gay community. Without us, you're nothing! We have been there all through history guiding your sorry ass through the underground railroad! ...We went to the prom with you!

It was hard for me to do the show (All American Girl) because a lot of people didn't even understand the concept of Asian-American. I was on a morning show, and the host said, 'Awright, Margaret, we're changing over to an ABC affiliate! So why don't you tell our viewers in your native language that we're making that transition?' So I looked at the camera and said, 'Um, they're changing over to an ABC affiliate.'

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples- faraway peoples- so that Americans might better understand themselves.

It's not true I had nothing on. I had the radio on.

My work is the only ground I've ever had to stand on. I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation - but I'm working on the foundation.

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world. Not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

I want to be an artist not an erotic freak. I don't want to be sold to the public as a celluloid aphrodisiac.

I am a great mayor. I am an upstanding Christian man. I am an intelligent man. I am a deeply educated man. I am a humble man.

Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born, With nowhere yet to rest my head, Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.

It is - last stage of all - When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves, To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blamed the living man.

These false answers - such as, I am stone, I am bird, I am animal, I am man, I am woman, I am great, I am small - are, in turn, received, tested and discarded until the Question arrives at the right and Final Answer, I AM GOD.

I was never the kind of painter or sculptor who kept a shop.

What do you despise? By this you are truly known.

What is unique about the 'I' hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual 'I' is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.

The eye... the point where a person's identity is concentrated.

I am a libertarian with a small l and a Republican with a capital R. And I am a Republican with a capital R on grounds of expediency, not on principle.

Allah is the Greatest. I'm just the greatest boxer.

I am America. I am the part you won't recognize, but get used to me. Black, confident, cocky - my name, not yours. My religion, not yours. My goals, my own. Get used to me.

There's not a day in my life I'm not proud of being gay but I just wasn't ready for that attention to be placed on it. I remember being on Oprah. Well, not on Oprah. Near Oprah. She started saying, 'Now, Nathan, you got all those girlie moves going down in The Birdcage, where's all that coming from? You're so good at all that girlie stuff!'

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

There's a devil inside me which cries, 'You're not the son of the Carpenter, you're the son of King David! You are not a man, you are the Son of man whom Daniel prophesied.' And still more: 'The Son of God! And still more: God!'

As you become more clear about who you really are, you'll be better able to decide what is best for you- the first time around.

You are what you are by what you believe!

I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.

I once heard a tale of a man who split himself in two. The one part never changed at all; the other grew and grew. The changeless part was always true, the growing part was always new, and I wondered, when the tale was through, which part was me, and which was you.

I am not a Virginian, but an American.

Mel [Gibson] will always be Mad Max, and me, I will always be a number.

Everywhere I am folded, there I am a lie.

Every man is wanted and no man is wanted much.

In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, - seven or eight ancestors at least, - and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

'I am not who I would like to be, It's just who I am right now.'

You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself - it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naive ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

I would get songs sung to me, like 'Old Man River', or kids would call me Mississippi and things like that. At the time, I wished I had a name that blended in more with my surroundings. Now, though, I've really learned to love it. From fifteen, I really liked it. It felt appropriate. Before that, I don't think it quite fitted me. I had to grow into it .

la ilaha il-Allah, wa Muhammadu... (There is no god but God and Muhammed [is His prophet])

I have always been amazed at my contemporaries' lack of finesse, I whose soul writhed from morning to night, in the mere quest of itself.

Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was, but that I was, forgot to be.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

The author of Biographia Literaria was already a ruined man. Sometimes, however, to be a 'ruined man' is itself a vocation.

Madonna's got one big choice. Take a couple of years off and become a human being.

A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is a habit.

If Honda does not race there is no Honda.'

'Me carrying a briefcase is like a hotdog wearing earrings.'

Cancel me not - for what then shall remain? Abscissas some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity.

'It was the family tradition. I wanted to live up to the name-McNair.'

'I'm a country guy from Mississippi who keeps it simple.'

'I'm proud of where I come from. A lot of people leave Mississippi, and their claim to fame is somewhere else. But I have so many moral values that made me the person I am now.'

I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.

I wrote a song, but I can't read music so I don't know what it is. Every once in a while I'll be listening to the radio and I say, 'I think I might have written that.'

As soon as I think that I am a little body, I want to preserve it, to protect it, to keep it nice, at the expense of other bodies; then you and I become separate.

Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and woman-all is Atman! Give up the identification with the body, and stand up!

The mistake is that we cling to the body when it is the spirit that is really immortal.

I'd like to stand up for the rights of people who put everything on their burger -- chutney, mustard, pickle, mustard pickle, tomato sauce... It is common knowledge in my family that I can't tell the difference between a veggie burger and a meat one, because the ratio of burger to pickles is so high.

This book had two authors, and they were both the same person.