300 Identity Quotes
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Based on the collected wisdom through the ages, it seems that who we are is largely determined by what we believe is our purpose in life and what paths we take to get there.
And, the rest of who we are seems to be made up of our core values, morals, or ethics—i.e., whatever we believe in. Hence, we are our beliefs.
I agree. Like the old saying, “You are what you eat,” one could similarly say, “You are what you think—and do!” But, it always pays to draw your own conclusions. So, have a look at a few of the quotes from some of your favorite authors, philosophers, and other celebrities below, then decide for yourself. Plenty of food for thought! : )
300 QUOTES ABOUT IDENTITY AND/OR SELF
1. You are your own judge. The verdict is up to you.
- Astrid Alauda
2. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.
- Alan Alda
3. If you don’t decide where you’re going, life will decide for you.
- Tim Allen
4. Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man’s life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self.
- B. R. Ambedkar
5. He who floats with the current, who does not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no convictions—such a man is a mere article of the world’s furniture—a thing moved, instead of a living and moving being—an echo, not a voice.
- Henri-Frédéric Amiel
6. Man never knows what he wants. He aspires to penetrate mysteries; and, as soon as he has, he wants to reestablish them. Ignorance irritates him, and knowledge cloys.
- Henri-Frédéric Amiel
7. There is something more—the spirit, or the soul. I think that that quality encourages our courtesy, and care, and our minds, and mercy, and identity.
- Maya Angelou
8. Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities. We would be condemned to wander helplessly, and without direction, in the darkness of each man’s lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities—a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel.
- Hannah Arendt
9. Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.
- Kevin Arnold
10. Resolve to be thyself; and, know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.
- Matthew Arnold
11. The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
- W.H. Auden
12. Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars; and, they pass by themselves without wondering.
- Saint Augustine
13. It’s like, at the end, there’s this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now! Was it worth what I paid?
- Richard Bach
14. The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.
- Richard Bach
15. You never find yourself until you face the truth.
- Pearl Bailey
16. There’s a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.
- Pearl Bailey
17. An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger. Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one’s nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one’s nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one’s robes.
- James Baldwin
18. An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.
- James Baldwin
19. I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.
- James Baldwin
20. It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.
- Lucille Ball
21. Our identities have no bodies; so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge.
- John Perry Barlow
22. A strong sense of identity gives man an idea he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same.
- Djuna Barnes
23. What we buy, and pay for, is part of ourselves.
- Amelia Barr
24. You grow up the day you have your first real laugh, at yourself.
- Ethel Barrymore
25. If you haven’t had at least a slight poetic crack in the heart, you have been cheated by nature.
- Phyllis Battelle
26. The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself and others, as he wishes.
- Charles Baudelaire
27. It is always the same: Once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.
- Jean Baudrillard
28. We grow neither better nor worse as we grow older, but more like ourselves.
- Mary Lamberton Becker
29. I say me, knowing all the while it’s not me.
- Samuel Beckett
30. Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages. Just because the rains descend and the winds blow, we cannot afford to build on shifting sands.
- Henry Ward Beecher
31. There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
- Henry Ward Beecher
32. There is deep wisdom within our very flesh, if we can only come to our senses and feel it.
- Elizabeth A. Behnke
33. Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves.
- Robert Neelly Bellah
34. Readjusting is a painful process, but most of us need it at one time or another.
- Arthur Christopher Benson
35. Once the curtain is raised, the actor ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third.
- Sara Bernhardt
36. Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
- Bhagavad Gita
37. Endurance is frequently a form of indecision.
- Elizabeth Bibesco
38. Belladonna: n. In Italian, a beautiful lady; in English, a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
- Ambrose Bierce
39. Undoubtedly, we become what we envisage.
- Claude M. Bristol
40. One secures the gold of the spirit when he finds himself.
- Claude M. Bristol
41. Like an old gold-panning prospector, you must resign yourself to digging up a lot of sand from which you will later patiently wash out a few minute particles of gold ore.
- Dorothy Bryant
42. Your work is to discover your world; and, then, with all your heart, give yourself to it.
- Buddha
43. If in the last few years you haven’t discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.
- Gelett Burgess
44. The person I am today is the same person I have been for quite a while. When I was turning thirty, I was writing and trying to figure out what this life meant to me. I realized I had been blessed with the vision of seeing the potential in everything—from the most ridiculous detail to the grandest scheme. I was born to enjoy this life in every possible way, and I have always known this world was mine to take and that I could do anything, go anywhere, and try anything. When those possibilities run out, I need to come up with more.
- Kathryn Busby
45. When your heart speaks, take good notes.
- Judith Campbell
46. Instead of boiling up individuals into the species, I would draw a chalk circle round every individuality and preach to it to keep within that and preserve and cultivate its identity.
- Jane Carlyle
47. The ideal is in thyself; the impediment, too, is in thyself.
- Thomas Carlyle
48. Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.
- Alexis Carrel
49. Take the time to come home to yourself every day.
- Robin Casarjean
50. The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live.
- Nicolas Chamfort
51. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
- G. K. Chesterton
52. The bright shining
only reflects back to myself,
my own light blinding me.
I can’t see the world and they can’t see me.
- Anna Chrisrest, “Orion’s Under the Clouds”
53. “It is of no importance to know who I am since some day I shall no longer be”—that is what each of us should answer those who bother about our identity and desire at any price to coop us up in a category or a definition.
- E. M. Cioran
54. You cannot fully understand your own life without knowing and thinking beyond your life, your own neighborhood, and even your own nation.
- Johnnetta Cole
55. I’ve left Bethlehem
and I feel free …
I’ve left the girl I was supposed to be
and some day I’ll be born.
- Paula Cole
56. We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war.
- Charles Caleb Colton
57. To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.
- Charles Caleb Colton
58. And, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
- Confucius
59. They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.
- Confucius
60. To the question of your life, you are the answer; and, to the problems of your life, you are the solution.
- Joe Cordare
61. Security represents your sense of worth, your identity, your emotional anchorage, your self-esteem, your basic personal strength or lack of it.
- Stephen R. Covey
62. A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.
- Jean de La Fontaine
63. No trumpets sound when the important decisions of your life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
- Agnes De Mille
64. The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself.
- Michel de Montaigne
65. A wise man never loses anything if he have himself.
- Michel de Montaigne
66. There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.
- Michel de Montaigne
67. I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
- Michel de Montaigne
68. No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
69. Living is being born slowly. It would be a little too easy if we could borrow ready-made souls.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
70. Fixing your objective is like identifying the North Star—you sight your compass on it; and, then, use it as the means of getting back on track when you tend to stray.
- Marshall E. Dimock
71. To be a person, you have to have a story to tell.
- Isak Dinesen
72. It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.
- Roy Disney
73. To be too conscious is an illness—a real, thoroughgoing illness.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
74. There are … things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself; and, every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
75. I’m neither Czech nor Slovak … I’m still trying to figure out who I am. I think I’m Jewish. But first I want to be human.
- Natasha Dudinska
76. Romantic love, in pornography, as in life, is the mythic celebration of female negation. For a woman, love is defined as her willingness to submit to her own annihilation. The proof of love is that she is willing to be destroyed by the one whom she loves, for his sake. For the woman, love is always self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of identity, will, and bodily integrity, in order to fulfill and redeem the masculinity of her lover.
- Andrea Dworkin
77. In this society, the norm of masculinity is phallic aggression. Male sexuality is, by definition, intensely and rigidly phallic. A man’s identity is located in his conception of himself as the possessor of a phallus; a man’s worth is located in his pride in phallic identity. The main characteristic of phallic identity is that worth is entirely contingent on the possession of a phallus. Since men have no other criteria for worth, no other notion of identity, those who do not have phalluses are not recognized as fully human.
- Andrea Dworkin
78. Think more about who you are and less about what you do; for, if you are just, your ways will be just.
- Meister Eckhart
79. The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge.
- Meister Eckhart
80. It’s never too late to be who you might have been.
- George Eliot
81. Our deeds still travel with us from afar; and, what we have been makes us what we are.
- George Eliot
82. Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
- George Eliot
83. There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.
- George Eliot
84. Men and women who know themselves are no longer fools; they stand on the threshold of the Door of Wisdom.
- Havelock Ellis
85. One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye; it transcends speech; it is the bodily symbol of identity.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
86. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
87. What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters to what lies within us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
88. We must be our own before we can be another’s.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
89. A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
90. First, say to yourself what you would be; and, then, do what you have to do.
- Epictetus
91. [The] sense of identity provides the ability to experience one’s self as something that has continuity and sameness, and to act accordingly.
- Erik Erikson
92. You see more in you than there was before.
- Clifton Fadiman
93. For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
- Clifton Fadiman
94. [Feminism] asks that women be free to define themselves instead of having their identity defined for them, time and again, by their culture and their men.
- Susan Faludi
95. What you have outside you counts less than what you have inside you.
- B. C. Forbes
96. Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in you mind’s eye, and you will be drawn toward it.
- Harry Emerson Fosdick
97. It is a poor and disgraceful thing not to be able to reply, with some degree of certainty, to the simple questions: “What will you be? What will you do?”
- John Foster
98. I cling to my imperfection, as the very essence of my being.
- Anatole France
99. A real life, a life that leaves a deposit in the shape of something alive … It’s difficult to say what makes a life a real life … You could also say it depends on a person being identical with himself.
- Max Frisch
100. All that remains is the mad desire for present identity through a woman.
- Max Frisch
101. Nothing is harder than to accept oneself.
- Max Frisch
102. You can put anything into words, except your own life.
- Max Frisch
103. Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one’s identity.
- Erich Fromm
104. Man may be defined as the animal that can say “I,” that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.
- Erich Fromm
105. Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.
- Erich Fromm
106. So she looked for herself, as everyone
Looks for himself, more or less outwardly.
- Robert Frost
107. You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
- James A. Froude
108. Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.
- R. Buckminster Fuller
109. We may be personally defeated, but our principles never.
- William Lloyd Garrison
110. I think I’ve already got the main thing I’ve always wanted, which is to be somebody, to have an identity. I’m Althea Gibson, the tennis champion. I hope it makes me happy.
- Althea Gibson
111. In order to judge properly, one must get away somewhat from what one is judging, after having loved it. This is true of countries, of persons, and of oneself.
- André Gide
112. “Know thyself”—a maxim as pernicious as it is odious. A person observing himself would arrest his own development. Any caterpillar who tried to “know himself” would never become a butterfly.
- André Gide
113. One’s self-image is very important because, if that’s in good shape, then you can do anything, or practically anything.
- John Gielgud
114. “Know thyself?” If I knew myself, I’d run away.
- Goethe
115. [W]hen you have a sense of your own identity and a vision of where you want to go in your life, you then have the basis for reaching out to the world, and going after your dreams for a better life.
- Stedman Graham
116. The value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose.
- Richard R. Grant
117. The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.
- Julien Green
118. Distinctly different as a child, as an adolescent, in his prime, and in his old age—man considers himself as one, not because he acts, but because he knows.
- Franz Grillparzer
119. Once you have looked at the land from atop the Kahlenberg, you will understand what I write and who I am.
- Franz Grillparzer
120. The safest way to commit the child to the values in one’s surroundings is to live with people with whom you identify. Then, identification happens through environment; and, you no special efforts to teach it.
- Tarja Halonen
121. Our foreparents were mostly brought from West Africa … We were brought to America and our foreparents were sold; white people bought them; white people changed their names … my maiden name is supposed to be Townsend; but, really, what is my maiden name? What is my name?
- Fannie Lou Hamer
122. The truth is that it is natural, as well as necessary, for every man to be a vagabond occasionally.
- Samuel H. Hammond
123. So what if people say terrible things? Whatever they call me, I say, “Yes, and my name is Mary.” I refuse to be afraid. And, I do this out of an obligation not to the community, but to myself. Nobody should have a say in who I am.
- Mary Hansen
124. Ninety percent of the world’s woes come from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and, even, their real virtues. Most of us go all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves—so how can we know anyone else?
- Sydney J. Harris
125. The Beatles exist apart from my Self. I am not really Beatle George. Beatle George is like a suit or shirt that I once wore on occasion; and, until the end of my life, people may see that shirt and mistake it for me.
- George Harrison
126. There is an eternal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives.
- Josephine Hart
127. I have preserved my identity, put its credibility to the test, and defended my dignity. What good this will bring the world, I don’t know. But, for me, it is good.
- Vaclav Havel
128. Every man is his own ancestor, and every man his own heir. He devises his own future, and he inherits his own past.
- H. F. Hedge
129. When your inner and outer energies radiate in harmony, you are blessed and spiritually magnetic.
- Jasmine Heiler
130. To the outer limits of space, man carries only the image of himself.
- Werner Karl Heisenberg
131. Our character is our destiny.
- Heraclitus
132. By all means, use some times to be alone. Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear.
- George Herbert
133. Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And, since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.
- Eric Hoffer
134. Tell me whom you love; and, I will tell you who you are.
- Arsène Houssaye
135. What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations and suppos‘d, tho‘ falsely, to be endow‘d with a perfect simplicity and identity.
- David Hume
136. Like the dead-seeming, cold rocks, I have memories within that came out of the material that went to make me. Time and place have had their say.
- Zora Neale Huston
137. “How can anyone seriously believe in his own identity?” he went on. “In logic, A equals A. Not in fact. Me-now is one kettle of fish; me-then is another.”
- Aldous Huxley
138. I have often thought that the best way to define a man’s character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself deeply and intensively active and alive. At such moments, there is a voice inside which speaks and says, “This is the real me.”
- William James
139. Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind.
- William James
140. The human race, as a whole, largely agrees as to what it shall notice and name, and what not. And, among the noticed parts we select, in much the same way, for accentuation and preference, or subordination and dislike. There is, however, one entirely extraordinary case in which no two men ever are known to choose alike. One great splitting of the whole universe into two halves is made by each of us; and, for each of us, almost all of the interest attaches to one of the halves; but, we all draw the line of division between them in a different place. When I say that we all call the two halves by the same names, and that those names are “me” and “not-me,” respectively, it will at once be seen what I mean.
- William James
141. The identity of one changes with how one perceives reality.
- Vithu Jeyaloganathan
142. Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.
- Samuel Johnson
143. It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts.
- K. T. Jong
144. Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?
- June Jordan
145. Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something.
- Carl Jung
146. A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence because he has no identity—he is continually informing and filling some other body.
- John Keats
147. There may be intelligence or sparks of the divinity in millions—but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself.
- John Keats
148. I love acting; but, I don’t like all of the other stuff associated with it: the interest in celebrities; the press; the internet; when your identity becomes mixed up in the way people are perceiving you.
- Nicole Kidman
149. The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss—an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.—is sure to be noticed.
- Søren Kierkegaard
150. Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
151. That’s the thing about needs. Sometimes when you get them met, you don’t need them anymore.
- Michael Patrick King
152. Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can’t even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.
- Barbara Kingsolver
153. Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.
- Barbara Kingsolver
154. The words “I am” are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you’re claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you.
- A. L. Kitselman
155. Driving down the wrong road and knowing it,
The fork years behind, how many have thought
To pull up on the shoulder and leave the car
Empty, strike out across the fields; and how many
Are still mazed among dock and thistle,
Seeking the road they should have taken?
- Damon Knight, “The Man in the Tree”
156. I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its fest of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somehwat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
- Stanley Kunitz, “The Layers”
157. Up to a point, a man’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements, and changes in the world about him. Then, there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, “This, I am today; that, I will be tomorrow.”
- Louis L’Amour
158. I’ve grown certain that the root of all fear is that we’ve been forced to deny who we are.
- Frances Moore Lappe
159. Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions.
- D. H. Lawrence
160. Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time.
- Timothy Leary
161. He who wakes up in a bed in which he did not go to sleep should immediately check his identity card.
- Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
162. That’s the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they’ve been all along.
- Madeleine L’Engle
163. It is terrible to destroy a person’s picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.
- Doris Lessing
164. Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.
- Elmer G. Leterman
165. I believe that man is, in the last resort, so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.
- Georg C. Lichtenberg
166. Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they’re worn out and times—and this is the worst of all—before we have new ones.
- Georg C. Lichtenberg
167. Whether outside work is done by choice or not, whether women seek their identity through work, whether women are searching for pleasure or survival through work—the integration of motherhood and the world of work is a source of ambivalence, struggle, and conflict for the great majority of women.
- Sara Lawrence Lightfoot
168. When one is out of touch with oneself, one cannot touch others.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
169. When a man like [Aleksis] Kivi has given a clear identity to so many persons, he himself really can no longer have his own clearly defined self.
- Väinö Linna
170. The self depends on consciousness, not on substance.
- John Locke
171. No one knows anybody’s name because nobody has a name. You’re just your state. I got to where somebody would say “Virginia,” and I’d answer. I was just “Virginia.” I wasn’t me any more.
- Wendy Dascomb Long, Miss Virginia
172. Reputation is in itself only a farthing candle, of a wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out; but, it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.
- James Russell Lowell
173. Camouflage is a game we all like to play, but our secrets are as surely revealed by what we want to seem to be as by what we want to conceal.
- Russell Lynes
174. I would introduce myself if it were not useless. The name I had last night will not be the same as the name I have tonight. For the moment, then, let me say that I am thinking of Sam Slovoda.
- Norman Mailer
175. There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
- Nelson Mandela
176. No one remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
- Thomas Mann
177. Hoary idea, in any case, expecting a woman to surrender her name to her husbands in exchange for his. Why? Would any man submerge his identity and heritage to the woman he wed?
- Marya Mannes
178. Identity is theft of the self.
- Estee Martin
179. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.
- Abraham Maslow
180. The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one’s opinion but rather to know it.
- André Maurois
181. Sex annihilates identity; and, the space given to sex in contemporary novels is an avowal of the absence of character.
- Mary McCarthy
182. At this very moment, you may be saying to yourself that you have any number of admirable qualities. You are a loyal friend, a caring person, someone who is smart, dependable, fun to be around. That’s wonderful, and I’m happy for you, but let me ask you this: Are you being any of those things to yourself?
- Phillip C. McGraw
183. Clarity of purpose exposes the foundation of the inner heart.
- M. H. McKee
184. We sometimes feel that we have been really understood; but, it was always long ago, by someone now dead.
- Mignon McLaughlin
185. It’s terrifying to see someone inside of whom a vital spring seems to have been broken. It’s particularly terrifying to see him in your mirror.
- Mignon McLaughlin
186. Those who are brutally honest are seldom so with themselves.
- Mignon McLaughlin
187. We catch frightful glimpses of ourselves in the hostile eyes of others.
- Mignon McLaughlin
188. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you?
- Thomas Merton
189. What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery; and, without it, all the others are, not only useless, but, disastrous.
- Thomas Merton
190. The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and, to confide in one’s self, and become something of worth and value, is the best and safest course.
- Michelangelo
191. If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.
- James A. Michener
192. First, I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m an actress.
- Marilyn Monroe
193. There comes a point in many people’s lives when they can no longer play the role they have chosen for themselves. When that happens, we are like actors finding that someone has changed the play.
- Brian Moore
194. A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
- George Moore
195. All men are sculptors, constantly chipping away the unwanted parts of their lives, trying to create their idea of a masterpiece.
- Eddie Murphy
196. Without self-understanding, without aim, we can hurt others around us as well as ourselves. If we don’t have a sense of the “bigger picture,” when things go wrong, we are not able to respond appropriately to events or people.
- Caroline Myss
197. This part of being a man, changing the way we parent, happens only when we want it to. It changes because we are determined for it to change; and, the motive for changing often comes out of wanting to be the kind of parent we didn’t have.
- Augustus Y. Napier
198. When I get all these accolades for being true to myself, I say, “Who else can I be? I can’t be Chris Evert.”
- Martina Navratilova
199. All paths lead to the same goal, to convey to others what we are.
- Pablo Neruda
200. The doer is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
201. One’s own self is well hidden from one’s own self; of all mines of treasure, one’s own is the last to be dug up.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
202. There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anaïs Nin
203. Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
- Anaïs Nin
204. Where we come from in America no longer signifies, it’s where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.
- Joyce Carol Oates
205. Your distress about life might mean you have been living for the wrong reason, not that you have no reason for living.
- Tom O’Connor
206. When you empty yourself of the illusion of who you are, and what you think you are, there is less to lose than you had feared.
- Carol Orsborn
207. In the theory of gender, I began from zero. There is no masculine power or privilege I did not covet. But, slowly, step by step, decade by decade, I was forced to acknowledge that even a woman of abnormal will cannot escape her hormonal identity.
- Camille Paglia
208. Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he just falls back into her and is swallowed up.
- Camille Paglia
209. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?
- Chuck Palahniuk
210. Who you are moment to moment is just a story.
- Chuck Palahniuk
211. People are all over the world telling their one dramatic story and how their life has turned into getting over this one event. Now their lives are more about the past than their future.
- Chuck Palahniuk
212. I, now, know myself to be a person of weakness and strength, liability and giftedness, darkness and light. I, now, know that, to be whole means to reject none of it, but to embrace all of it.
- Parker Palmer
213. The ancient human question “Who am I?” leads inevitably to the equally important question “Whose am I?”—for there is no self outside of relationship.
- Parker Palmer
214. One must know oneself. If it does not serve to discover the truth, it, at least, serves as a rule of life, and there is nothing better.
- Blaise Pascal
215. Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday. You are, today, where the thoughts of yesterday have brought you; and, you will be, tomorrow, where the thoughts of today take you.
- Blaise Pascal
216. You’ve got to be original because, if you are like somebody else, what do they need you for?
- Bernadette Peters
217. I think history is inextricably linked to identity. If you don’t know your history, if you don’t know your family, who are you?
- Mary Pipher
218. It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away; I’m looking for the truth.” And, so, it goes away. Puzzling.
- Robert M. Pirsig
219. I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.
- Sylvia Plath
220. Almost always it is the fear of being ourselves that brings us to the mirror.
- Antonio Porchia
221. Some things become so completely our own that we forget them.
- Antonio Porchia
222. Everything that I bear within me, bound, is to be found somewhere else, free.
- Antonio Porchia
223. And if you find everything as soon as you look for it, you find it in vain, you look for it in vain.
- Antonio Porchia
224. I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.
- Katherine Anne Porter
225. The real meditation is … the meditation on one’s identity. Ah, voilà une chose!! You try it. You try finding out why you’re you and not somebody else. And who in the blazes are you anyhow? Ah, voilà une chose!
- Ezra Pound
226. Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.
- Hugh Prather
227. Identity is such a crucial affair that one shouldn’t rush into it.
- David Quammen
228. The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
- Anna Quindlen
229. When those who have the power to name and to socially construct reality choose not to see you or hear you … when someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked in the mirror and saw nothing. It takes some strength of soul—and not just individual strength, but collective understanding—to resist this void, this non-being, into which you are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.
- Adrienne Rich
230. Who has not sat, afraid, before his own heart’s curtain?
- Rainer Maria Rilke
231. Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart; and, try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not, now, seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And, the point is to live everything. Live the questions, now. Perhaps you will find them, gradually, without noticing it, and live along, some distant day, into the answer.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
232. An effective human being is a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
- Ida P. Rolf
233. Identity may be termed as action which is conscious of itself.
- Jane Roberts as “Seth”
234. I think, somehow, we learn who we really are and, then, live with that decision.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
235. A man is ever apt to contemplate himself out of all proportion to his surroundings.
- Christina G. Rossetti
236. Identity is a bag and a gag. Yet, it exists for me with all the force of a fatal disease. Obviously, I am here, a mind and a body. To say there’s no proof my body exists would be arty and specious; and, if my mind is more ephemeral, less provable, the solution of being a writer with solid (touchable, tearable, burnable) books, is as close as anyone has come to a perfect answer.
- Judith Rossner
237. It is not our abilities that determine who we are, but our choices.
- J. K. Rowling
238. Men are self-confident because they grow up identifying with superheroes. Women have bad self-images because they grow up identifying with Barbie.
- Rita Rudner
239 For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.
From within, I couldn’t decide what to do.
Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
Then I walked outside.
- Rumi
240. By writing, I create an identity for myself. Without it, I wouldn’t feel being anybody, thus a personality. It’s not as much a question of self-expression as a need of finding yourself.
- Pentti Saarikoski
241. We have five senses in which we glory and which we recognize and celebrate, senses that constitute the sensible world for us. But there are other senses—secret senses, sixth senses, if you will—equally vital, but unrecognized, and unlauded.
- Oliver Sacks
242. I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity?
- William Saroyan
243. You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours.
- Anne-Wilson Schaef
244. I am my own heaven and hell!
- Friedrich Schiller
245. I have no concrete image of myself. I look in the mirror, and what I see is someone who has never grown up … ; when I’m doing a role I feel it’s the role doing the role … When someone tells me, “You were great as so-and-so,” I feel they should be telling this to so-and-so; and, when I finish a picture, I feel a horrible sudden loss of identity.
- Peter Sellers
246. If a man does not know what port he is steering for, no wind is favorable to him.
- Seneca
247. We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
- William Shakespeare
248. I to the world am like a drop of water,
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth
(Unseen, inquisitive), confounds himself.
So I, to find a mother and a brother,
In quest of them (unhappy), lose myself.
- William Shakespeare
249. All the world is a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and entrances;
Each man in his time plays many parts.
- William Shakespeare
250. This is the true joy in life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.
- George Bernard Shaw
251. No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.
- George Bernard Shaw
252. It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too.
- H. W. Shaw
253. There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.
- Carol Shields
254. True strength is found not in perfection, but in understanding our own limitations.
- Annette Simmons
255. If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven’t been born yet.
- Neil Simon
256. Children don’t read to find their identity, to free themselves from guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology … They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff … When a book is boring, they yawn openly. They don’t expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish illusions.
- Isaac Bashevis Singer
257. I feel my body, my mind, weighted down—all is heavy—but, my blood, my inner fire, my passion, the little unburdened kid in me, patiently wait to burst free. Some of us die never having burst.
- Drew Sirtors
258. For souls in growth, great quarrels are great emancipators.
- Logan Pearsall Smith
259. One cannot spend forever sitting and solving the mysteries of one’s history.
- Lemony Snicket
260. There are at least two kinds of cowards. One kind always lives with himself, afraid to face the world. The other kind lives with the world, afraid to face himself.
- Roscoe Snowden
261. Make yourself the sort of person you want people to think you are.
- Socrates
262. Nature never repeats herself; and, the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
263. If we don’t know where we are, we don’t know who we are.
- Wallace Stegner
264. The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.
- Ben Stein
265. The minute you or anybody else knows what you are, you are not it. You are what you, or anybody else, knows you are; and, as everything, in living, is made up of finding out what you are, it is extraordinarily difficult, really, not to know what you are, and, yet, to be that thing.
- Gertrude Stein
266. Think about the pressure to “pass” by lying about one’s age … that familiar temptation to falsify a condition of one’s birth or identity and pretend to be part of a more favored group. Fair-skinned blacks invented “passing” as a term; Jews escaping anti-Semitism perfected the art; and, the sexual closet continues the punishment. But, pretending to be a younger age is probably the most encouraged form of “passing,” with the least organized support for “coming out” as one’s true generational self.
- Gloria Steinem
267. Work is an essential part of being alive. Your work is your identity. It tells you who you are. It’s gotten so abstract. People don’t work for the sake of working. They’re working for a car, a new house, or a vacation. It’s not the work itself that’s important to them. There’s such a joy in doing work well.
- Kay Stepkin
268. A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
269. To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying “amen” to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
270. Your identity and your success go hand in hand. Many people sacrifice their identities by not doing what they really want to do. And, that’s why they’re not successful.
- Lila Swell
271. People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But, the self is not something one finds; it is something one creates.
- Thomas Szasz
272. Committing yourself is a way of finding out who you are. A man finds his identity by identifying. A man’s identity is not best thought of as the way in which he is separated from his fellows, but the way in which he is united with them.
- Robert Terwilliger
273. The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.
- Thales
274. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach; and, not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
- Henry David Thoreau
275. You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.
- Henry David Thoreau
276. Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
- Henry David Thoreau
277. All people should strive to learn, before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.
- James Thurber
278. I loathe the expression “What makes him tick.” It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.
- James Thurber
279. I’m not Jack Nicholson. I’m not Brando. But I do mumble.
- Benicio Del Toro
280. A miracle is nothing more or less than this: Anyone who has come into a knowledge of his true identity, of his oneness with the all-pervading wisdom and power; this makes it possible for laws higher than the ordinary mind knows of to be revealed to him.
- Ralph Waldo Trine
281. Particularly in the early years of the child’s development, parents may get different opinions from professionals who view the child in different settings. A pediatrician seeing the child in a busy office diagnoses “attention deficit disorder”; a nursery school teacher who observes the child in an unruly classroom calls him “hyperactive” … a psychologist or psychiatrist … decides he’s very active but not “hyper” and talks of emotional and family problems; while a neurologist, meeting with the child on a one-to-one basis, … says he is “normal.”
- Stanley Turecki
282. The question of who or what the Me is, is not a simple one at all.
- Mark Twain
283. Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
- Mark Twain
284. We do not deal much in facts when we are contemplating ourselves.
- Mark Twain
285. I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.
- Mark Twain
286. He who knows others is learned;
He who knows himself is wise.
- Lao-Tzu
287. Since you are like no other ever created, since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.
- Brenda Ueland
288. What we do flows from who we are.
- Paul Vitale
289. We are the products of editing, rather than authorship.
- George Wald
290. This is not remarkable, for, as we know, reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past and future events. We seem here to have a paradox: that the reality of an event, which is not real in itself, arises from the other events, which, likewise, in themselves are not real. But, this only affirms what we must affirm: that direction is all. And, only as we realize this, do we live—for our own identity is dependent upon this principal.
- Robert Penn Warren
291. Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
- Alan Watts
292. It you have an arid identity, you have no love to give.
- Alan Watts
293. Who you are is based upon how others have reacted to you, and what sort of impression they have given you of the kind of person you are. Your education plays into the process as well; and, out of all this, an ego emerges that is a conceptual expression of who you think you are. The style of life you then live is a reflection of this image.
- Alan Watts
294. It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a diary. Possibly to some mysterious personification of one’s own identity.
- Beatrice Webb
295. It is fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves.
- Simone Weil
296. One’s only real life is the life one never leads.
- Oscar Wilde
297. Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde
298. Most urgently, women’s identity must be premised upon our “beauty” so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem exposed to the air.
- Naomi Wolf
299. Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book shown to him by heart, and his friends can only read the title.
- Virginia Woolf
300. Man can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as … from a lack of bread.
- Richard Wright
CONCLUSION
There’s quite a bit of overlap between “identity,” “existence,” and “sarcastic” quotes. Such abstract, all-important topics such as “who we are” and “why we are” are prone to fuzzy boundaries and lighter, humorous treatment. But, that makes them no less worthy of our serious study to first get to know our selves so that we can next learn what will truly make us happy and, finally, go for it! : )
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[For “200 Happiness Quotes,” click here.]
[For “200 Existence Quotes,” click here.]
[For “100 Health Quotes,” click here.]
[For “300 Friendship Quotes,” click here.]
[For “100 Love and Marriage Quotes,” click here.]
[For “100 Family Quotes,” click here.]
[For “100 Interesting Quotes by Women,” click here.]
[For all posts about different QUOTES, click here.]
[For “25 Statements to Happiness,” click here.]
