Quotes about identity
page 10

“The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

394
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Men, Democracy

“Our identity as a nation — unlike many other nations — is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood. Being an American involves the embrace of high ideals and civic responsibility. We become the heirs of Thomas Jefferson by accepting the ideal of human dignity found in the Declaration of Independence. We become the heirs of James Madison by understanding the genius and values of the U. S. Constitution. We become the heirs of Martin Luther King, Jr., by recognizing one another not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. This means that people of every race, religion, and ethnicity can be fully and equally American. It means that bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed. And it means that the very identity of our nation depends on the passing of civic ideals to the next generation… Self-correction is the secret strength of freedom. We are a nation with a history of resilience and a genius for renewal.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Remarks at Bush Institute Summit, "The Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In The World" at the Bush Institute Summit in New York City https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2YlVZxu_L0 (October 2017), as quoted in The Washington Post http://archive.is/jl9AF#selection-2115.0-2135.112 (October 2017) 2010s, 2017

People, Secret, Religion, Color

“If identical goods were being produced at widely differing efficiency in different parts of the United Kingdom or if the United Kingdom and Germany, or Japan, or the United States, were part of a single unit with a single currency, then of course the less efficient producers would be knocked out. That is why Germany is so keen for Britain to go into the European Monetary System, so that it can wipe out the British industries which it is in competition.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech in London (21 March 1980), quoted in Enoch Powell on 1992 (Anaya, 1989), p. 97

Parting

“Identity is the most important question to answer. Who are we racially? Who are we historically? Who are we in terms of our experience? Who are we in terms of our community?”

Richard Bertrand Spencer (1978) American white supremacist

10 December 2015 https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/bnp33d/we-asked-a-white-supremacist-what-he-thought-of-donald-trump-1210 2015

Communication, Question

“There is a crisis of masculinity in Britain because of the pressures rapid economic and social change have placed on masculine identity. A generation of men are in transit and unclear of their social role. They are also under pressure to live up to pornified ideals.”

Diane Abbott (1953) British Labour Party politician

Diane Abbott to warn of British 'masculinity crisis' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22530184 BBC News (15 May 2013) 2010s, 2013

Men, Change

“But the weird thing is that many of the people who are outraged by benign nationalism or the benign pan-nationalism that is pride in Western civilization take no umbrage when someone from Iran or China says they think their civilization is best. This of course is a manifestation of the ancient cult of identitarianism, which the best traditions of the West have battled internally at great cost for thousands of years. Saying Western civilization is great hurts the feelings of some people invested in some other source of identity. And it hurts the feelings of some Westerners because they think it’s a sign of enlightenment to get offended on other people’s behalf or to denigrate the society that gave them their soap box.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2019, What's So Great About Western Civilization (2019)

People, Feeling, Thinking, Hurt

“The sacred books of the East are the best evidence for the greatness of their authors, for who in later days or in modern times can even approach the spiritual sublimity of their religious thought, the intellectual splendour of their philosophy, the breadth and purity of their ethic? And when we find that these books contain teachings about God, man, and the universe identical in substance under much variety of outer appearance, it does not seem unreasonable to refer to them to a central primary body of doctrine. To that body we give the name Divine Wisdom, in its Greek form: THEOSOPHY.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: The Ageless Wisdom (1897)

Wisdom, God, Books, Universe

“Summarizing his deficiencies, Karl Marx was neither progressive nor enlightened; he was a racist, anti-Semite, a German nationalist, a warmonger, autocratic, anti-freedom proponent, Machiavellian, pro-Black slavery, petty, homophobic, megalomaniac, a bully and slanderer, anti-choice, and a reactionary against liberalism and industrial capitalism. In almost every sense, Marx fit the quintessential image of Hitler like a tight glove, both appearing almost indistinguishable. Like father and son, Marx and Hitler were two social justice warriors, determined to weaponize intolerance, racism, and nationalism for what they call the greater good. In so many ways, considering their almost identical political and social makeup, metaphorically speaking, Hitler could easily be regarded as the son of Marx.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 361

Justice, Way, Sense, Freedom

“Fascism is anti-Marxism which seeks to destroy the enemy by the evolvement of a radically opposed and yet related ideology and by the use of almost identical and yet typically modified methods, always, however within the unyielding framework of national self-assertion and autonomy. This definition implies that without Marxism there is no fascism, that fascism is at the same time closer to and further from communism than is liberal anti-communism, that it necessarily shows at least an inclination toward a radical ideology, that fascism should never be said to exist in the absence of at least the rudiments of an organization and propaganda comparable to those of Marxism.”

Ernst Nolte (1923–2016) German historian and philosopher

Source: Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism (1965), pp. 20–21

Communication, Relation ships, Time, Self-confidence

“The Jewish tradition has two distinct tendencies: the more fundamental one, represented by the philosophers and poets and scholars who were interested only in Jewish issues and in the Jewish Weltanschauung; and the other tendency associated with great figures such as Spinoza or Einstein, and to a certain extent also Heinrich Heine, and which applied the traditions of Jewish thinking to other cultures, including German culture, and to other issues. It is not difficult to see how a double identity developed among Jews.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Daniel Barenboim, " Germans, Jews, and Music https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2001/03/29/germans-jews-and-music/" (The New York Review of Books, 29 March 2001) A - F, Daniel Barenboim

Thinking

“Conservatives used to believe in the overwhelming benefits of immigration. Most nationalists want to restrict even legal immigration. Conservatives used to believe that America should always speak and sometimes act in defense of freedom-seekers everywhere. Nationalists strike the bargain that America will mind its own business if others mind theirs. Conservatives used to oppose identity politics for being hostile to individual freedom. Nationalism is the superimposition of one form of identity politics over various others.”

Bret Stephens (1973) far-right American

The New Conservative Pyrite (2019)

Hostility, Business, Freedom

“There is nothing whatever in Existence but immediate and living Thought:—Thought, I say, but by no means a thinking substance, a dead body in which thought inheres,—with which no-thought indeed a no-thinker is full surely at hand:—Thought, I say, and also the real Life of this Thought, which at bot tom is the Divine Life; both of which—Thought and, this its real Life—are molten together into one inward organic Unity; like as, outwardly, they are one simple, identical, eternal, and unchangeable Unity.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Way Towards The Blessed Life or the Doctrine of Religion 1806, P. 56

Life, Thinking, Dead

“His faith in humanity began from an acknowledgement of limitation, not an illusion about perfectibility. He knew that joy flowed from honesty, rather than around it—sound familiar? In a similar way, Christians, whose identity is found apart from our ever-changing and often hopeless abilities and attributes, are free to laugh at ourselves. This is part and parcel of Christian joy.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

About, "The Gospel According to Jim Henson" by David Zahl

Faith, Way, Change, Joy

“He was one of the few judges who could occasionally poke fun at himself. He told me that once he was sitting at a dinner at the Cambridge University where a number of distinguished persons had been invited. Next to him was an elderly gentleman whose identity he did not know. There was some discussion about the theory of relativity and he aired his own views with a certain measure of authority. His neighbour told him that his views were interesting and invited him for a cup of tea in the next two or three days. Later on he found out that he had been talking to the world renowned physicist Sir Arthur Eddington who was reputed as one of the few persons apart from Einstein who understood the theory of relativity. He never picked up the courage to go for that cup of tea and face Sir Arthur Eddington.”

Mohammad Hidayatullah (1905–1992) 11th Chief Justice of India

M.H. Kania
Full Court Reference in Memory of The Late Justice M. Hidayatullah

World, Courage, Universe, Tea

“The way we work, the way we talk, the way we watch television or walk down the street, even the way we fuck, or maybe that especially—each of those is part of the problem of identity. We can’t do any of those things authentically until we find out who we really are and be that person, inside and out, instead of the person other people want us to be. Usually those other people, if they want us to be something we aren’t, are using us as a laboratory for working out their own identity problems.”

Thomas M. Disch (1940–2008) Novelist, short story writer, poet

Emancipation: A Romance of the Times to Come (1971)

People, Way, Problem, Parting

“All of us have masculine and feminine qualities—some of this is genetic, and some of it comes from the profound influence of the parent of the opposite sex. But in the need to present a consistent identity in society, we tend to repress these qualities, overidentifying with the masculine or feminine role expected of us. And we pay a price for this. We lose valuable dimensions to our character. Our thinking and ways of acting become rigid. Our relationships with members of the opposite sex suffer as we project onto them our own fantasies and hostilities. You must become aware of these lost masculine or feminine traits and slowly reconnect to them, unleashing creative powers in the process. You will become more fluid in your thinking. In bringing out the masculine or feminine undertone to your character, you will fascinate people by being authentically yourself. Do not play the expected gender role, but rather create the one that suits you.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 12 : Reconnect to the Masculine or Feminine Within You
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Hostility, People, Sex, Way

“Iranian society is multi-ethnic and multi-religious and blessed with a rich culture. All the national and religious identities of the Middle East can be found there. This diversity is in contrast to the hegemonic claim of the theocracy, which cultivates a subtle religious and ethnic nationalism; the ruling class does not shrink back from anti-modernist propaganda whenever it serves their interests, although they implement capitalist modernity.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan, p.52
The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Democratic Confederalism

“When the prison gates slam behind an inmate, he does not lose his human quality; his mind does not become closed to ideas; his intellect does not cease to feed on a free and open interchange of opinions; his yearning for self-respect does not end; nor is his quest for self-realization concluded. If anything, the needs for identity and self-respect are more compelling in the dehumanizing prison environment.”

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396 (1974) (Concurring opinion).

Idea, Self-confidence

“Science is not art. Yet, despite the lack of complete identity between art and science, there is much in common among different creative processes.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Introduction to the Enlarged Edition
1940s, Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947; 1983)

Art, Science

“There are two separate answers…For people in general, I think they should name themselves in whatever way they wish. The flourishing of the gay movement in America is clearly very necessary and the identity that people could proudly lay claim to is crucial. Lives are lost every day because of bigotry in this country. So I think that should not prevail.”

Saffron Burrows (1972) English actress, model and writer

On labelling and sexual orientation in “Saffron Burrows: ‘I’m really proud of my family and who they are’” https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/dec/01/saffron-burrows-married-to-alison-balian-mozart-in-the-jungle in The Guardian (2014 Dec 01)

People, Way, Thinking, Country

“Culture plays also an important role in the life of minorities, who are generally discriminated in such societies where there is no political and religious freedom. Under these circumstances, their cultural values and symbols help them to retain their identity.”

Mubarak Ali (1941) Historian, activist, scholar

In Search of History, Chapter: Cultural Intervention and Social Change, p. 13/14
Culture

Life, Freedom, Help

“We have a lot of things that define who we are from where we come from and as filmmakers we need to be true to our identity.”

Usama Mukwaya (1989) Ugandan screenwriter

Source: " https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2TC5Opl0YY" at Filmhackers.org. 10 June 2019

“I preside over a government that is made up of three independent parties who have built consensus around the issues we will collectively pursue. The fact that we will work together collaboratively does not diminish the identities of those parties. There are a number of reasons why confidence and supply is a form of arrangement that will suit the needs of particular parties and why others will prefer coalition. I have no trouble, and I do not question my role or authority simply by allowing a party to speak to that issue themselves.”

Jacinda Ardern (1980) Prime Minister of New Zealand

On why the Greens are outside of cabinet.
Interview with Lisa Owen at Newshub Nation, 21 October 2017

Confidence, Question, Self-confidence

“[B]iography is an essential part of human memory. We think about ourselves in terms of what we have done – our identity is constructed around our past. Are history and biography linked or just two parallel strands? Biographers and historians make choices about how to frame their subject, they draw together fragments to present a possible glimpse of the unattainable whole. An historian might have a thesis or method which drives his/her enquiry whereas a biographer has, perhaps, a particular view of an individual they wish to present. Neither presents the truth, only an interpretation.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 2 : The authority of the author : Biography and the reconstruction of the canon

Truth, Making love, History, Thinking

“I would never say "I'm straight, I'm bisexual, I'm gay." I feel like I will fall in love with a human being for who they are. I'm not afraid to say I've been attracted to a woman before and I've kissed girls before and been in love with them before. I've never really had a girlfriend or anything and I would never say I'm anything, really. I don't have an identity in that way.”

Kate Nash (1987) English pop singer and actor

Source: [Bendix, Trish, Kate Nash: "I would never say I’m straight. I don’t have an identity in that way.", https://www.afterellen.com/more/76790-kate-nash-i-would-never-say-im-straight-i-dont-have-an-identity-in-that-way, After Ellen, 18 July 2010, 13 November 2013]

Love, Making love, Way, Feeling

“It (COVID-19) is a close relative to SARS and MERS but not genetically identical.”

Paul Kellam (1965) British virologist

Paul Kellam (2020) cited in " Coronavirus: Virologist reveals the science behind fight to find vaccine for global outbreak https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-virologist-reveals-the-science-behind-fight-to-find-vaccine-for-global-outbreak-11922559" on Sky News, 31 January 2020.

“One reason for the increased interest in studies of identity in anthropology may be the fact that issues to do with the nature of groups have become hugely important in politics worldwide in the last decades.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 9 : Social Identity

Nature, Study

“There is no direct ethnic connection between the identities of different peoples of the Rigvedic period and the identities of actual different peoples living in present-day India, or indeed in the world today.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

TALAGERI 2008:363
The Rigveda and the Avesta (2008)

People, World

“The survival of the West depends on Americans reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western societies.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 1: The New Era in World Politics, § 1 : Introduction: Flags And Cultural Identity

Universe, Dependency

“A sense of identity is the gift of love, and only love can give it.”

Elizabeth Goudge (1900–1984) English fiction writer

The Dean's Watch (1960), Chapter 9.2

Love, Making love, Sense

“Without recognizing it as such, humanity is undergoing a great spiritual crisis that is focused through the political and economic field. That spiritual crisis can only be resolved by the resolution of our political and economic problems, which are based on the false sense of separation. If we would evolve, develop as a race, we must realize our oneness, realize that we are brothers and sisters of one family, under the one Divine Source, and identical with that Source. What happens in a normal family? They share whatever they have. A mother will not feed one child better than another, give one child 17 per cent and another 83 per cent of the food. We have to realize that we are one family, and therefore must share the resources of the world more equitably around the world.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: Maitreya's Mission Vol. III (1997)

World, Family, Food, Problem

“There can be no question of a general overriding ‘Germanic’ or ‘Celtic’ identity amongst the different barbarian groups. Shared language might have facilitated communication and alliance but there is no evidence for or reason to suppose a higher level of ethnic identity on this basis.”

Guy Halsall (1964) English historian

Source: Quotaes, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 (2007), p. 58

Communication, Question

“Questions of identity have always played a large part in my thinking and writing; and, of course, race is a key component of identity. Certainly for me, and certainly in Britain.”

Caryl Phillips (1958) Kittian-British writer

On the recurring theme of his works in “CARYL PHILLIPS: INTERVIEW” https://mosaicmagazine.org/caryl-phillips-interview/#.Xe58ovlKjcs in Mosaic Magazine (2012 Mar 19)

Question, Thinking, Parting

“[M]y axiom runs as follows: "The whole is not identical with a part." This axiom leads us at once to a problem. What relation has the part to the whole?”

Karl Pearson (1857–1936) English mathematician and biometrician

The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)

Problem, Relation ships, Parting

“Being gay isn't a choice, just like being black isn't a choice…I don't stop. I do not give up. I do not take America's 'no' to my identity for an answer.”

Saeed Jones (1985) American poet

On being Black and gay in the United States in “'We're All Struggling': Writer Saeed Jones Reflects On Identity And Acceptance” https://www.npr.org/2019/11/06/776747102/we-re-all-struggling-writer-saeed-jones-reflects-on-identity-and-acceptance in NPR (2019 Nov 6)

“It is the prayer of my innermost being
To realize my supreme identity
In the liberated play of consciousness,
The Vast Expanse.
Now is the moment,
Here is the place of Liberation.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), The Vast Expanse

“In a work of art, however modest, the peculiar character of life is always reflected in the fact that it has no parts which keep their qualitative identity in isolation. In the simplest design, the virtual constituents are indivisible, and inalienable from the whole.”

Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher

Vol. 1, p. 200
Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling (1967, 1972, 1982)

Life, Art, Parting

“The functional regions of the brain which subserve physical agony, the "pain centres", and the mainly limbic substrates of emotion, appear in phylogenetic terms to be remarkably constant in the vertebrate line. The neural pathways involving serotonin, the periaquaductal grey matter, bradykinin, dynorphin, ATP receptors, the major opioid families, substance P etc all existed long before hominids walked the earth. Not merely is the biochemistry of suffering disturbingly similar where not effectively type-identical across a wide spectrum of vertebrate (and even some invertebrate) species. It is at least possible that members of any species whose members have more pain cells exhibiting greater synaptic density than humans sometimes suffer more atrociously than we do, whatever their notional "intelligence."”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

1.9 The Taste of Depravity https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon1.htm#taste The Hedonistic Imperative https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/514875 (1995)

Pain, Family, Intelligence, Suffering

“Contrary to what is usually thought, nationalism is a type of tribal-collectivism where individual identity is subjugated to a collective group identity, making it a perfect habitat for most species of socialism and fascism.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 96

Making love, Perfection

“When we're born, our experience is half the time spent undoing these ideas that were placed onto our body since birth and then building a personal identity on top of that.”

Morgan Parker (writer) American poet

On the Black experience in “'Magical Negro' Carries The Weight Of History” https://www.npr.org/2019/02/11/693587521/magical-negro-carries-the-weight-of-history in NPR (2019 Feb 11)

Idea, Birth, Time, Personality

“The herdist instinct is furthermore not only personal, in the sense that it clamors for a personal collectivism; it creates also a longing and desire for the visual or acoustic contemplation of identitarian or uniformistic phenomena. The true herdist, the man truly dominated by that inferior instinct, will not only rejoice in marching amongst twenty thousand uniformly clad soldiers, all stepping rhythmically in one direction, but he will find an almost equal gratification in contemplating the show from a balcony. He will not only be happy in sitting amidst two hundred other bespectacled businessmen, drinking beer and humming one chant in unison, but the aspect of a skyscraper with a thousand identical windows will probably impress him more than a picture by Botticelli or Zurbarán.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Pg 16
The Menace of the Herd (1943)

Happiness, Drink, Beer, Sense

“I’ve never really defined myself by a single identity—and in these times where identity means so much, I sometimes feel like I’m a bit of an outsider to every identity. Perhaps that makes me uniquely suited to writing about teens, who often feel on the outside”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

NEAL SHUSTERMAN’S INCLUSIVE YA AND TALKING TO THE AUTHOR ABOUT REPRESENTATION https://bookriot.com/neal-shusterman-interview/ (May 26, 2020)

Making love, Feeling, Time

“I consider myself a border person, even though I grew up in the south of Mexico and very north of the U.S., in Minneapolis. I hold many of the same realities with the people who have grown up around these borders. We share the languages, they have a very kind of open identity of who we are, they are constantly growing and learning from different cultures, and also absorb what comes from other cultures to make it our own…”

Lila Downs (1968) Mexican American singer-songwriter

On her affinity with those who were raised or reside on the U.S.-Mexico border in “Q&A: Lila Downs, A Sin and A Miracle” https://remezcla.com/music/lila-downs-sin-miracle-pecados-milagros-interview/ in Remezcla (c. 2011) Heritage and indigenous peoples

People, Making love, Reality, Learning

“The Communists and Fascists are engaged in a sham struggle of ideas. The actual forms of government under which Fascists and Communists live are almost identical. One claims to abolish private property and attacks the other as its defender. But the property of Russia is not controlled by the people, but by the bureaucracy, operating in the name of the people, just as it is in Germany, where you get your head cut off if you try to hold your property in gold or in anything except German paper.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 62

People, Idea

“Personal identity, like social identity, divides up the individual's world of others for him. The division is first between the knowing and the unknowing. The knowing are those who have a personal identification of the individual; they need only see him or hear his name to bring this information into play. The unknowing are those for whom the individual constitutes an utter stranger, someone of whom they have begun no personal biography.”

Erving Goffman book Stigma

Source: 1950s-1960s, Stigma, 1963, Ch.2 - p. 85

World, Personality

“[W]e understand that if the child were to give in to the overpowering character of reality and experience he would not be able to act with the kind of equanimity we need in our non-instinctive world. So one of the first things a child has to do is to learn to “abandon ecstasy,” to do without awe, to leave fear and trembling behind. Only then can he act with a certain oblivious self-confidence, when he has naturalized his world. We say “naturalized” but we mean unnaturalized, falsified, with the truth obscured, the despair of the human condition hidden, a despair that the child glimpses in his night terrors and daytime phobias and neuroses. This despair he avoids by building defenses; and these defenses allow him to feel a basic sense of self-worth, of meaningfulness, of power. They allow him to feel that he controls his life and his death, that he really does live and act as a willful and free individual, that he has a unique and self-fashioned identity, that he is somebody—not just a trembling accident germinated on a hothouse planet that Carlyle for all time called a “hall of doom.””

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

We called one’s life style a vital lie, and now we can understand better why we said it was vital: it is a necessary and basic dishonesty about oneself and one’s whole situation. This revelation is what the Freudian revolution in thought really ends up in and is the basic reason that we still strain against Freud We don’t want to admit that we arerevelation is what the Freudian revolution in thought really ends up in and is the basic reason that we still strain against Freud. We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives. We don’t want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or openly a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all-absorbing activity, a passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own center. All of us are driven to be supported in a self-forgetful way, ignorant of what energies we really draw on, of the kind of lie we have fashioned in order to live securely and serenely. Augustine was a master analyst of this, as were Kierkegaard, Scheler, and Tillich in our day. They saw that man could strut and boast all he wanted, but that he really drew his “courage to be” from a god, a string of sexual conquests, a Big Brother, a flag, the proletariat, and the fetish of money and the size of a bank balance.
Human Character as a Vital Lie
The Denial of Death (1973)

Life, Death, Truth, World

“The experiences differ from the typical dream state principally in the following ways: (1) Continuity of some sort of conscious awareness; (2) Intellectual or emotional (or blends of the two) decisions made during the experiences; (3) Multivalued perception via sensory inputs or their equivalents; (4) Non-recurrence of identical patterns; and (5) Development of events in sequence that seem to indicate a time lapse.”

Robert Monroe (1915–1995) American founder of The Monroe Institute

Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 14. Mind and Supermind

Dreams, Way, Decision, Time

“[S]ince vegetal fat is identical chemically with animal fat, and vegetal protein with animal protein, since these substances are found abundantly in non-flesh products, and since the only other food substances used by man (starch and sugar) are not found except in plants and plant products, it may be asserted positively that from the standpoint of food-supply there is no reason why man should prey when he eats. The plant world contains all of the compounds necessary for human alimentation, it contains them abundantly, it contains them in forms of the highest delicacy and the greatest variety and economy, and it contains them in a much more prime condition than they are found in the diseased tissues of our mistreated servants.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), What Shall We Eat?, pp. 92–93

World, Disease, Food, Animals

“Meaning can be found in all sorts of places. For most individuals it is found in the love of the people and places around them: in friends, family and loved ones, in culture, place and wonder. A sense of purpose is found in working out what is meaningful in our lives and then orientating ourselves over time as closely as possible to those centres of meaning. Using ourselves up on identity politics, social justice (in this manifestation) and intersectionality is a waste of a life.”

Douglas Murray (1979) British political commentator and far-right activist

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019)

Love, Life, People, Making love

“A man provides leadership.
A man provides direction, caution, and advice to others.
A man provides emotional and spiritual support.
A man provides stability and order.
A man provides companionship and good company.
A man provides identity.
A man provides an example.
All of these things require personal sacrifices of time, dedication, and effort. And from where does the strength and inspiration for that come? Or, in other words, what is worth living for, sacrificing for, and even dying for?”

William G. Boykin (1948) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Source: Man to Man: Rediscovering Masculinity in a Challenging World (2020), p. 5

Support, Effort, Time, Personality

“I like working with identities and stories outside of my own experience, so it’s kind of just a necessity…”

Young Jean Lee (1974) American theatre director and playwright

On researching her subject matter in “An Interview with Young Jean Lee” https://www.theintervalny.com/interviews/2018/08/an-interview-with-young-jean-lee/ in The Interval (2018 Aug 14)

“Unlike utilitarianism, republican theory does not take people's existing preferences, whatever they may be, and try to satisfy them. It seeks instead to cultivate in citizens the qualities of character necessary to the common good of self-government. Insofar as certain dispositions, attachments, and commitments are essential to the realization of self-government, republican politics regards moral character as a public, not merely private, concern. In this sense, it attends to the identity, not just the interests, of its citizens.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

Chap. 2. Rights and the Neutral States
Democracy's Discontent (1996)

People, Sense

“Self-inquiry begins by looking to discover whether the personal identity, with all its conditioning and idiosyncrasies, is who we truly are. And it ends as a mirror in which the timeless is reflected.”

Mooji (1954) Jamaican spiritual teacher

Greater than Sky, Vaster than Space, (2018), Part I

Personality

“At this time of crisis, I find great comfort in returning to nature, the wilderness, the richness and vast scale of the land. It has shaped the American identity; circling back to the landscape gives me hope for the future.”

An-My Lê (1960) American photographer

Interview with ARTNews (March 3, 2020)

Hope, Nature, Time, Future

“I probably was the one out of the three of us that was like, ‘Let’s go, let’s get big, let’s get everybody.’ I wasn’t necessarily thinking about organizational structure... I was mostly thinking about building a mass movement that people can be a part of and feel an identity around.”

Opal Tometi (1984) Nigerian–American writer, strategist and community organizer

How the movement that’s changing America was built and where it goes next, By Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone, (16 June 2020)

People, Feeling, Thinking, Parting

“Nations are not easily forged since many identities have to be coalesced.”

Romila Thapar (1931) Indian historian

The Past as Present : Forging Contemporary Identities Through History

“To categorize some people as indigenous and others as alien, to argue about the identity of the first inhabitants of the subcontinent, and to try and sort out these categories for the remote past, is to attempt the impossible.”

Romila Thapar (1931) Indian historian

Introduction, xxiv.
Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300

People, Past

“Identity is much less a thing people "inherit" than it used to be.”

Barry Schwartz book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

The Paradox of Choice (2004)

People

“Regarding the change in identity, I actually took the initiative to accept and work hard to change in this direction, because I feel that growing up on the stage is not as rewarding as recording a show, and I am still eager to go.”

Yang Li (1992) Chinese stand-up comedian

Original: 【开腔】杨笠：过去一年，反倒是我最不迷茫的一年
Source: [https://www.chinanews.com/yl/2021/10-12/9584866.shtml
(12 October 2021)

Feeling, Change

“What it is you identify with begins to shift. When you go around the Earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognise that your identity is with that whole thing.”

Rusty Schweickart (1935) American astronaut

Source: Quoted in "The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution" by Frank White

“We have been so persistently taught that prayer consists in asking God for some human need that we have lost sight of our spiritual identity and have become a race of praying beggars.”

Charles Fillmore (1854–1948) American mystic

Source: Teach Us to Pray with Cora Fillmore (1941)

God

“Flanders is a land of cathedrals and belfries, not mosques and minarets. The Flemish identity is linked to democracy and Islam clashes with our idea of a democracy.”

Tom Van Grieken (1986) Belgian politician

Source: Tom Van Grieken: The white person must be a dominant factor in our society." https://www.nieuws365.be/news/27302/tom-van-grieken-het-blanke-moet-een-dominante-factor-zijn-in-onze-samenleving.

Democracy, Idea

“We know what identity politics does -- it divides, and it polarizes. No matter how you want to look at it, that's just the effect of it no matter how great the intentions are. We all know the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Marcellus Wiley (1974) American football player

Marcellus Wiley: NBA plan to paint 'Black Lives Matter' on courts 'not a good idea' https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/marcellus-wiley-nba-plan-to-paint-black-lives-matter-on-courts-not-a-good-idea (June 2020)

Hell

“I don’t believe in identity politics in literature—or in life much, either. Indeed the current scholarly enchantment with identity politics strikes me as a more intellectual version of the warning oft heard around Sunnyside when I was growing up: “Stick with your own kind.””

Maureen Corrigan (1955) American journalist and writer

Source: Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading (2005), Chapter 2 (p. 70)
Context: Family and cultural origins are crucial to self-definition, but they’re not the end of the story. I certainly don’t think that we readers only or even chiefly enjoy or understand books whose main characters mirror us. In fact, the opportunity to become who we are decidedly not—whether it’s Amis’s Dixon or Philip Roth’s Portnoy or Ellison’s Invisible Man or Kafka’s beetle—is one of the greatest gifts reading offers. Women readers get to serve on that floating boy’s club, the Pequod; male readers get to step into Elizabeth Bennet’s shoes and teach Mr. Darcy the dance of humility; readers of either gender who are not African American get to crawl toward freedom alongside Toni Morrison’s Sethe. One of the most magical and liberating things about literature is that it can transport us readers into worlds totally unlike our own.

Life, Literature

“My mumsie and my popsie both died years before I was born, and my sister and my uncle were identical twins, which is probably more than you can say for yourself.”

Brother Theodore (1906–2001) German-American monologuist and comedian

Sister

“The identity integrity and gift to dream again people saw and learn from my life especially as a person living with disability NOW.”

Adenike Oyetunde (1986) Nigerian founder of amputees united

Source: https://www.hernetwork.com.q-a-adenikeoyetunde Adenike Oyetunde on question and answer section at Her Network.

Life, People, Dreams, Learning

“Group identity can be fractionated right down to the level of the individual.”

Jordan Peterson book 12 Rules for Life

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Rule 11: Do not bother children when they are skateboarding

“I think that it is very important to protect our Israeli and Jewish identity. It's not simple. We live in a very diverse world, but part of a person's ability to develop is having an identity that you believe in and belong to.”

Isaac Herzog (1960) Israeli politician

Source: Isaac Herzog (2021) cited in " Israel’s president to Palo Alto students: Check out Hebrew TikTok https://www.jweekly.com/2021/12/20/israels-president-to-palo-alto-students-check-out-hebrew-tiktok/" on The Jewish News of Northern California, 20 December 2021.

World, Thinking, Parting, Personality

“As of today, a digital identity for Monégasque people and Monaco's residents is becoming a reality. It is allowing for new and safe ways to meet the needs of everyone living in the Principality.”

Pierre Dartout (1954) French official

Source: Pierre Dartout (2021) cited in: " Monaco creates a digital identity for everyone in the Principality https://www.monaco-tribune.com/en/2021/06/monaco-creates-a-digitial-identity-for-everyone-in-the-principality/" in Science Alert, 30 June 2021.

People, Way, Reality

“During the festival we appreciate how big is God´s gift to Asmat people. They can preserve their identity through their woodcarvings. Their carving is art that reflects fundamental beliefs passed down from generation to generation.”

Aloysius Murwito (1950) Indonesian catholic priest

Source: Church Continues To Preserve Asmat Culture Through Art Festival https://www.ucanews.com/story-archive/?post_name=/2006/10/30/church-continues-to-preserve-asmat-culture-through-art-festival&post_id=28455 (6 October 2006)

God, People, Art

“Georgia's character - now and forever - celebrates tolerance, embraces diversity, relishes lively and open debate, and above all, respects liberty and human dignity. Georgia is a democracy, because above all - its national identity is rooted in the traditions of democracy.”

Mikheil Saakashvili (1967) Georgian-Ukrainian politician, President of Georgia and Governor of Odessa

Remarks to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (2005) Source: As quoted in "Remarks of the President of Georgia H.E. Mikheil Saakashvili to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe" https://reliefweb.int/report/georgia/remarks-president-georgia-he-mikheil-saakashvili-parliamentary-assembly-council (26 January 2005), ReliefWeb

Democracy

“Instead of determining the action of life, ends, norms and values are determined by it. This determination consists in the fact that one experiences oneself constantly and knows oneself at every moment. Life also knows at each instant what must be done and what is suited to it. This knowledge is no different from action. It does not precede it or "determine" it, properly speaking. It is identical to it, as the original know-how of life, as praxis and a living body. Action, as we have seen, is only the actualization of the primitive power of this phenomenological body.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, Barbarism, Continuum, 2012, p. 96-97
Books on Culture and Barbarism, Barbarism (1987)

Life, Knowledge

“You are not weak. You are brave. One of the bravest I know. Speaking your truth, a person living at the intersection of multiple identities, unapologetically, takes courage. I love you”

Jurnee Smollett (1986) American actress

14 February 2019 https://twitter.com/jurneesmollett/status/1096168270506258432 re Jussie Smollett (older brother)

Love, Truth, Courage, Personality

“Language has become the universal evil. And we can certainly see why. What characterizes any word is its difference from the thing – the fact that, taken in itself, in its own reality, language contains nothing of the reality of the thing, none of its properties. This difference from the thing explains its indifference to the thing. Since a word has nothing in itself that is identical or similar to what is in the thing, it could as well be united with any other thing whatever. One could use the same name for two different things or else attribute several names to the same thing. But because, in and of itself, the word contains nothing that is real and ignores everything about that reality, it could just as well bring reality back to itself, identify with it, define it, in such a way that everything the word says becomes reality, and pretends to stand for it. Emerging from its own powerlessness, the power of language suddenly becomes frightening, shaking up reality, twisting it up in its frenzy.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 9

Way, Reality, Universe, Evil

“Being jewish is a tangible unbroken form of identity going back 3000 years, whiteness is a construct from 200 ybp.”

Barbara Lerner Spectre (1942) Israeli academic

Source: Twitter https://web.archive.org/web/20150712181104/https://twitter.com/barbara_spectre/status/554422393951633408 (2015)

“You say we are Chinese, and they say we are Americans, but if we look at the planets from space and think about the future of mankind, we have only one identity, that is, we are all citizens of the Earth.”

Qin Gang (1966) politician

"Ambassador Qin: China, U.S. should work together to promote interest of mankind" in CGTN https://newsus.cgtn.com/news/2022-04-12/CGTN-exclusive-interview-with-Ambassador-Qin-Gang-199PKD3NXSU/index.html (12 April 2022)

Thinking, Future

“In the political debate we often ask ourselves the question of our identity. But our identity is never built on narrow-mindedness, or on first names or crampedness.”

Emmanuel Macron (1977) 25th President of the French Republic

Macron lashes out at Zemmour: “Our identity is not built on narrow-mindedness" https://palnws.be/2021/09/macron-haalt-uit-naar-zemmour-onze-identiteit-is-niet-gebouwd-op-bekrompenheid/ 2017, 2021

Question

“It's always small details that reveal a person's identity.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Sono sempre piccoli dettagli a rivelare l'identità di una persona.
Source: prevale.net

Personality

“Linking the national identity with race is not unique to the United States. National identity always requires an "other" to define it. But this country has linked its identity with race to an extraordinary degree, matched only by two other settler states: South Africa and Israel.”

Elizabeth Martinez (1925) American community organizer, activist, author, and educator

De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century (2017)

Country

“The history of national defense and building with untold sweat and bloods has forged a Vietnam's vitality, a distinct cultural identity, a resilient internal strength for development, and a capability to adapt herself to the times and harmoniously co-exist with other nations in the world.”

Nguyễn Tấn Dũng (1949) Prime Minister of Vietnam

"Deputy Pm Nguyen Tan Dung Speaks At John Hopkins University" https://vietnamembassy-usa.org/relations/deputy-pm-nguyen-tan-dung-speaks-john-hopkins-university (10 December 2021)

World, History, Time

“As long as you identify with the identity that the society gave you, you can never be free.”

Ralph Smart

“Time and actions tell the true identity of anyone.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Il tempo e le azioni raccontano la vera identità di chiunque.
Source: prevale.net

Time

“Time is the master par excellence able to show the true identity of any individual.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Il tempo è il maestro per eccellenza in grado di mostrare la vera identità di qualsiasi individuo.
Source: prevale.net

Time

“In the professional field, guard each of your discoveries jealously, that world is not altruistic, it deserves the same, identical treatment.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: In ambito professionale, custodite gelosamente ogni vostra scoperta, quel mondo non è altruista, merita lo stesso, identico trattamento.
Source: prevale.net

World

“Losing interest in you often reveals the true identity of many people.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Perdere interesse nei tuoi confronti spesso rivela la vera identità di molte persone.
Source: prevale.net

People

“It's important to always maintain your identity. In any kind of relationship, one should never feel in prison.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: È importante mantenere sempre la propria identità. In qualsiasi tipo di relazione, non ci si dovrebbe mai sentire in prigione.
Source: prevale.net

Feeling

Quotes about identity page 10

Quotes about identity
page 10