Gender Identity Quotes

There is definitely a way in which women are raised to be less proactive, less business-oriented, and less willing to jump into creative no man's land. I think media has more of an influence on how we perceive gender identity than anything else. ~ Felicia Day

Indeed, many movies about artificial intelligence are so divorced from scientific reality that one suspects they are just allegories of completely different concerns. Thus the 2015 movie Ex Machina seems to be about an AI expert who falls in love with a female robot only to be duped and manipulated by her. But in reality, this is not a movie about the human fear of intelligent robots. It is a movie about the male fear of intelligent women, and in particular the fear that female liberation might lead to female domination. Whenever you see a movie about an AI in which the AI is female and the scientist is male, it's probably a movie about feminism rather than cybernetics. For why on earth would an AI have a sexual or a gender identity? Sex is a characteristic of organic multicellular beings. What can it possibly mean for a non-organic cybernetic being? ~ Yuval Noah Harari

I felt myself a new species of child. Not a boy (most assuredly) but neither a (mere) girl. That skirt-bound race perpetually moving about serving tea had nothing to do with me.

I had such high hopes, you see.

The boundaries of the world seemed vast. I would visit Rome, Paris, Constantinople. Underground cafés presented in my mind where, crushed against wet walls, a (handsome, generous) friend and I sat discussing - many things. Deep things, new ideas. Strange green lights shone in the streets, the sea lapped nearby against greasy tilted moorings; there was trouble afoot, a revolution, into which my friend and I must - Well, as is often the case, my hopes were…not realized. ~ George Saunders

In July I think
about the idea of being cursed
(because it's not strange to me;
when I look in mirrors I'm
not there, blank walls gleaming
with bloody condensation,
and my shadow behind me
mocking me with his persistence
when I keep telling him
to leave just to leave to let me be). ~ Miriam Joy

I'm quite certain now that I'm male and always have been, but I was told otherwise for so long that I accepted I couldn't be. ~ Ana Mardoll

Its never too early to give children the guidance and to create or make your relationship with them a safer space.

When your child has questions or in some cases can articulate their sexuality/gender experiences, handle them with respect and affirmations. ~ Tlaleng Mofokeng

I can see where this is going, too. Of course, I can, because I am Alex as well. But I want to dress up in gorgeous clothes and strut up and down the runway like they do in the magazines, swishing my tail. I want to dress up with Amina and Julia and giggle and be girlfriends, arm in arm. I want to be beautiful. I want other people to think I am beautiful. ~ Alyssa Brugman

When did you know you were a girl? When did I know I was a boy?" he said. "I knew my whole life. I can't tell you exactly when, but it wasn't like I was ten and realized, 'Oh gee, I must be a boy!' What people fail to realize is they made that decision way earlier than that. It just happened that their gender identity and their anatomy matched. ~ Jaime A. Seba

It's not possible to live twenty-four hours a day soaked in the immediate awareness of one's sex. Gendered self-consciousness has, mercifully, a flickering nature. ~ Denise Riley

I can understand why you would want to be literally out of your own heard, because being inside your own head is unbearable. ~ Alyssa Brugman

If one does not make an ego out of gender, one would still know whether one is a man or a woman, gay, straight, bisexual, transgender - whatever else we may think of. But those identities need to fit very loosely and be worn very lightly. All sense of privilege or deprivation that has developed around one's gender identity, all rigidity regarding proper roles and behaviors for the various genders, must be cut through. ~ Rita M. Gross

If gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows or produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is no preexisting identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there would be no true or false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the postulation of a true gender identity would be revealed as a regulatory fiction.That gender reality is created through sustained social performances means that the very notions of an essential sex and a true or abiding masculinity or femininity are also constituted as part of the strategy that conceals gender's performative character and the performative possibilities for proliferating gender configurations outside the restricting frames of masculinist domination and compulsory heterosexuality. ~ Judith Butler

We are undermining a generation's happiness by depriving them of national identity, religious identity, and gender identity ~ Dennis Prager

John [the father] kept saying, "You have a penis. That means you're a boy." One day, Shannon noticed that her son had been in the bathroom an awfully long time and pushed the door open. "He had a pair of my best, sharpest sewing scissors poised, ready to cut. Penis in the scissors. I said, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'This doesn't belong here. So I'm going to cut it off.' I said, 'You can't do that.' He said, 'Why not?' I said, 'Because if you ever want to have girl parts, they need that to make them.' I pulled that one right out of my ass. He handed me the scissors and said, 'Okay. ~ Andrew Solomon

What happens when we say something out loud? Does it become more real? Is it any less really when we keep it to ourselves? ~ Aimee Herman

Gender identity is our internal response to a social construction that attempts to make a connection between a person's biological makeup and their eventual role in society. ~ Sam Killermann

the problem of gender identity is our evasion of the implications of power and our may-I-say-"feminine" inclinations to make nice. War is not nice. ~ June Jordan

Most of the people on the Cloud Ark were going to have to be women.
There were other reasons for it besides just making more babies. Research on the long-term effects of spaceflight suggested that women were less susceptible to radiation damage than men. They were smaller on average, requiring less space, less food, less air. And sociological studies pointed to the idea that they did better when crammed together in tight spaces for long periods of time. This was controversial, as it got into fraught topics of nature vs. nurture and whether gender identity was a social construct or a genetic program. ~ Neal Stephenson

I have heard an argument that transgender people oppress transsexual people because we are trying to tear down the categories of male and female. But isn't this the same reactionary argument used against transmen and transwomen by those who argue that any challenges to assigned birth sex threaten the categories of man and woman? Transgender people are not dismantling the categories of man and woman. We are opening up a world of possibilities in addition. Each of us has a right to our identities. To claim one group of downtrodden people is oppressing another by their self-identification is to swing your guns away from those who really do oppress us, and to aim them at those who are already under siege. ~ Leslie Feinberg

For my relationships with men to change, I needed to change my relationship to myself as a woman. ~ Gloria Ng

I watched those women get eaten alive. And as a result of my witnessing that at a super fucking vulnerable moment for me, I internalized the message that a trans lesbian is just not an okay thing to be if you wanna be tolerated or respected by anybody other than a handful of communists. So I began my transition with essentially no role model of a widely respected and admired trans lesbian. And it doesn't help that most forms of transphobia are harsher on gay trans women than they are on straight trans women. Like take this trope that trans women are men who transition to creep on women in bathrooms. In response to that, it feels really good to be able to say, I'm not even attracted to women. I'm just a petite heterosexual biogirl. I'm surely not some kind of six foot monster who likes women. Ugh, shame! Shame! It does make me feel like a monster sometimes, like a mutant that has no place in society. And this shame has actually made it more difficult for me to accept that I'm a gay woman, than it was for me to come out as trans in the first place. It's like I made a kind of subconscious bargain where I traded my sexual orientation for my gender identity. So I finally transitioned only to spend the next couple years living with a different kind of denial. And that denial got pretty deep and pretty dark.

This is painful and incriminating to admit, but not all of my shame came from external bigotry. Some of it came from my own judgment and disgust toward things I saw ~ Natalie Wynn

To all trans youth out there, I would like to say respect yourself and be proud of who you are. All human beings deserve equal treatment no matter their gender identity or sexuality. To be perceived as what you say you are is a basic human right, ~ Andrej Pejic

...first we should not seek to derive the content of gender identity by mirroring God, because any femininity or masculinity we may find in God was projected onto God; second the content of gender identity is rooted in the sexed body ('nature') and forged by the history of social interaction between persons with such sexed bodies ('culture'). ~ Miroslav Volf

What is the bedrock on which all of our diverse trans populations can build solidarity? The commitment to be the best fighters against each other's oppression. As our activist network grows into marches and rallies of hundreds of thousands, we will hammer out language that demonstrates the sum total of our movement as well as its component communities.

Unity depends on respect for diversity, no matter what tools of language are ultimately used. This is a very early stage for trans peoples with such diverse histories and blends of cultures to form community. Perhaps we don't have to strive to be one community. In reality, there isn't one women's, or lesbian, gay, bi community. What is realistic is the goal to build a coalition between our many strong communities in order to form a movement capable of defending all our lives. ~ Leslie Feinberg

Your gender identity is who you are. Sexual identity is who you bounce that off of. ~ Andrew Solomon

I followed the trail out of the room, invigorated by the possibility of reinventing my own body. The meaning was mine, as long as I was with those who had the vision and vocabulary to understand my creation. ~ Nick Krieger

Many people believe that gender identity ... is rooted in biology ... Many other people understand that gender is more like language than like biology; that is, while they understand us humans to have a biological capacity to use language, they point out we are not born with a hard-wired language "preinstalled" in our brains. Likewise, while we have a biological capacity to identify with and learn to "speak" from a particular location in a cultural gender system, we don't come into the world with a predetermined gender identity. ~ Susan Stryker

So, let's all take one more step. We have learned to love ourselves, so now I urge you to speak yourself.

I would like to ask all of you. What is your name? What excites you and makes your heart beat?

Tell me your story. I want to hear your voice, and I want to hear your conviction. No matter who you are, where you're from, your skin colour, gender identity: speak yourself.

Find your name, find your voice by speaking yourself. ~ Kim Namjoon

We have created a rhetoric of "gender identity" that is disconnected from biological sexual fact, and we have done so largely in the service of enabling the sexual mutilation of physically healthy men and women (significantly more men) by medical authorities who should be barred by professional convention if not by conscience from the removal of healthy organs (and limbs, more on that later), an act that by any reasonable standard ought to be considered mutilation rather than therapy. ~ Kevin D. Williams

There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender ... identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results. ~ Judith Butler

she used to wear pearls, not bones. ~ Roxanna

We can mention periods obliquely, of course, when we want to delegitimize women's real concerns, dismiss their more inconvenient emotions, and perpetuate the myth that having outie junk instead of innie junk (and a male gender identity) makes a person an innately more rational and competent human being. ~ Lindy West

Accepted social gender roles and expectations are so entrenched in our culture that most people cannot imagine any other way. As a result, individuals fitting neatly into these expectations rarely if ever question what gender really means. They have never had to, because the system has worked for them. ~ Nicki Petrikowski

Sometimes boys grew up to be women. And girls grew up to be men. ~ Leah Raeder

The state of being female is complicated by other categories such as class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, religious belief, and so on. ~ Kristen R. Ghodsee

Even at such a tender age, I knew that life is lived in leftovers, account ledgers, and timetables rather than in the Platonic sphere of perfect theory. I couldn't float sylphlike around Love Hall in the flowing robes of indeterminacy for the rest of my life, however much I wished there to be no change. I had to accept my responsibilities and, at least in the eyes of the world and at least for the time being, nail my colors to a mast. Unless I wished to appear a strange wonder for the rest of time, caked in circus makeup covering the truth inches beneath, the mast would be male. ~ Wesley Stace

At some point during my research, I came across the term "gender fluid." Reading those words was a revelation. It was like someone tore a layer of gauze off the mirror, and I could see myself clearly for the first time. There was a name for what I was. It was a thing. Gender fluid.

Sitting there in front of my computer--like I am right now--I knew I would never be the same. I could never go back to seeing it the old way; I could never go back to not knowing what I was.

But did that glorious moment of revelation really change anything? I don't know. Sometimes, I don't think so. I may have a name for what I am now--but I'm just as confused and out of place as I was before. And if today is any indication, I'm still playing out that scene in the toy store--trying to pick the thing that will cause the least amount of drama. And not having much success. ~ Jeff Garvin

Instead of saying that all gender is this or all gender id that, let's recognize that the word gender has scores of meanings built into it. It's an amalgamation of bodies, identities, and life experiences, subconscious urges, sensations, and behaviours, some of which develop organically, and others which are shaped by language and culture. Instead of saying that gender is any one single thing, let's start describing it as a holistic experience. ~ Kate Bornstein S. Bear Bergman

I didn't read much SF as a kid - I was a total Tolkien geek - but I started reading Samuel Delany and Angela Carter and Ursula LeGuin in high school, and I was definitely taken with the notion that here was a literature that could explore various notions of gender identity and how it affects the culture at large. ~ Elizabeth Hand

So when I was about 13 or 14, I realized I was attracted to women and then made the assumption that I was a lesbian, and didn't realize that that wasn't the case. It was the fact that I was a man and a heterosexual man. The issue wasn't my sexual orientation, but rather my gender identity. ~ Chaz Bono

Some day, my son, you are going to learn that the two greatest joys of being a man are beating the hell out of someone and getting the hell beaten out of you, good night. ~ Richard Price

The voices belonged to dragons.
Five of them lay on or sprawled over or curled around the various rocks and columns that filled the huge cave where Cimorene stood. Each of the males (there were three) had two short, stubby, sharp-looking horns on either side of their heads; the female dragon had three, one on each side and one in the center of her forehead. The last dragon was apparently still too young to have made up its mind which sex it wanted to be; it didn't have any horns at all. ~ Patricia C. Wrede

Nowadays, we are assigning gender even before birth. We have become socially conditioned to participate in the gendering of children at the earliest possible moment - whenever a sonogram can identify its genitalia. Gender-reveal parties have become a trendy way to celebrate the child's fate, steering them down a life of masculine or feminine ideals before ever meeting them. ~ George Matthew Johnson

All young people, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, need someone who's got their back. ~ James Lecesne

Sexuality is who you are personally attracted to ... But gender identity is who you are in your soul. ~ Caitlyn Jenner

Do you want me to lick you again? ~ Alyssa Brugman

It reached a point where the paranoia was getting to me. Everywhere I looked, it seemed like people were hanging out, wanting to date, hooking up, wanting to hook up - it was relationships, relationships, relationships everywhere. Guys checking out girls, girls checking out guys. Dudes checking out dudes, chicks checking out chicks. Fuck! That's what being a teenager was all about. ~ Jess C. Scott

Most of us experience gender conditioning so young - research shows it begins in infancy - that we misunderstand the relationship between nature and nurture, culture and biology, fitting in and being oneself. ~ Thomas Page McBee

So now I'm thinking about it. I'm imagining sitting down with my parents and actually saying, "I'm gay." And you know what? It makes me a little mad. I mean, straight guys don't have to sit their parents down and tell them they like girls. ~ Michael Thomas Ford

Besides a fascinating story, the John/Joan/David Reimer case highlights several issues of prime importance about sex and gender that can be applied to questions surrounding sexual orientation. First, the body of evidence collected over several decades from adults who underwent unnecessary and wrong gender assignment and sex reassignment surgeries teaches us that trying to match gender to genitals should not be a standard. Gender and genitals do not necessarily align. Gender is an innate trait established within the fetal brain. Furthermore, the attempt to change what is natural and inborn in a person has devastating effects on lives. ~ Kathy Baldock

Being socialized female and spending my life "othered" by this world gives me a unique perspective. In the past, this has felt like shit. In the present, it feels pretty good. In the future I hope somebody loves me enough to watch me age ungracefully. ~ Harvey Katz

Inside every man there is a potential woman and inside every woman resides a potential man. ~ John Maxwell Taylor

Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act ... a doing rather than a being. ~ Judith Butler

It is long past time to eliminate bigotry in the workplace and to ensure equal opportunity for all Americans. It is time to make clear that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans are first class citizens. They are full and welcome members of our American family and they deserve the same civil rights protections as all other Americans. It is time for us to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Such discrimination is wrong and should not be tolerated. ~ Tom Harkin

How you identify or what you prefer in the bedroom does not define your goals, dreams or interests, and has no baring on who you are as a human being, You don't need to dress or behave a certain way because of your sexual orientation if you don't want to. Trust that there are groups and resources out there that will support you no matter what. I know that I certainly appreciate all of my fans equally! ~ Natasha Negovanlis

So many people go through life, and they never deal with their own issues, no matter what the issues are - ours happen to be gender identity. But, how many people go through life and just waste an entire life 'cause they'd never deal with themselves to be who they are. ~ Caitlyn Jenner

Gender is not only women and sexual orientation has multiple choices. ~ Gloria D. Gonsalves

The first thing you're going to want to know about me is: Am I a boy, or am I a girl? ~ Jeff Garvin

It is not possible to preserve one's identity by adjusting for any length of time to a frame of reference that is in itself destructive to it. It is very hard indeed for a human being to sustain such an 'inner' split - conforming outwardly to one reality, while trying to maintain inwardly the value it denies. ~ Betty Friedan

Lesson number one: "Sexual orientation is who you go to bed with," he told Spack. "Gender identity is who you go to bed as. ~ Amy Ellis Nutt

There is no formula when it comes to gender and sexuality. Yet it is often only people whose gender identity and/or sexual orientation negates society's heteronormative and cisnormative standards who are targets of stigma, discrimination, and violence. I wish that instead of investing in these hierarchies of what's right and who's wrong, what's authentic and who's not, and ranking people according to these rigid standards that ignore diversity in our genders and sexualities, we gave people freedom and resources to define, determine, and declare who they are. ~ Janet Mock

Honey, there is no one right way to eat cannelloni. ~ Alyssa Brugman

Words change depending on who speaks them; there is no cure. The answer isn't just to introduce new words (boi, cis-gendered, andro-fag) and then set out to reify their meanings (though obviously there is power and pragmatism here). One must also become alert to the multitude of possible uses, possible contexts, the wings with which each word can fly. Like when you whisper, You're just a hold, letting me fill you up. Like when I say husband. ~ Maggie Nelson

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will. ~ Charlotte Bronte

I am proud to state that every national Jewish organization we support enforces non-discrimination practices around sexual orientation and that more than 70 percent have written policies in place covering gender identity and expression. ~ Lynn Schusterman

I can't blame you for trying to categorize me. It's a human instinct. It's why scientists are, to this day, completely flabbergasted by the duck-billed platypus: it's furry like a mammal, but lays eggs like a bird. It defies conventional classification.
I AM THE PLATYPUS (Coo coo ka-choo) ~ Jeff Garvin

It's easy to fictionalize an issue when you're not aware of the many ways in which you are privileged by it. ~ Kate Bornstein

Centuries of social conditioning has created a generational fear among women of being perceived as masculine.This is where all the shaming and labels come into play, which perpetuate the oppression of girls and women. As a society we shame girls with deep voices or masculine features and we shame boys with soft voices or effeminate gestures. Girls get called "too manly" and boys get called "too girly". The only solution I can think of is to be unashamedly "you". If that means challenging stereotypes and gender norms, go right ahead! ~ Miya Yamanouchi

That's all true, but there was something else going on for me as a kid, something about my gender identity that I haven't figured out yet. And that's one of the things I'm hoping to dissect and investigate in this memoir project. ~ Alison Bechdel

Latter-Day Saints proclaim that "marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children." We also know that "gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose." Marriage between a man and a woman is fundamental to the Lord's doctrine and crucial to God's eternal plan. Marriage between a man and a woman is God's pattern for a fullness of life on earth and in heaven. God's marriage pattern cannot be abused, misunderstood, or misconstrued. ~ Russell M. Nelson

I guess what I find so interesting about memory, and its role in a person's identity, is how the attempt to achieve accuracy requires you to remove yourself from your life in an authorial manner. ~ Heidi Julavits

In the long run, We Realize that life without one gender,would end up boring ~ Maurys Gaucho

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

We are addicted to our egotism, our likes and dislikes and prejudices, and depend upon them for our own sense of identity. ~ Karen Armstrong

While you may be able to keep your son Jimmy from owning [a gun], if you try to talk him out of wanting one, you are up against a pretty strong argument: You mean I shouldn't want a device that grants me power and identity, makes me feel dangerous and safe at the same time, instantly makes me the dominant male, and connects me to my evolutionary essence? Come on, Mom, get real! ~ Gavin De Becker

Daniel Craig is brilliant as Bond: there is no question about that. But it's a different Bond. It's the cross pollination of 'The Bourne Identity' and 'James Bond;' that kind of style of filmmaking. ~ Pierce Brosnan

Of course, it is true that plastic surgeries and sex reassignments are "artificial," but then again so are the exercise bikes we work out on, the antiwrinkle moisturizers we smear on our faces, the dyes we use to color our hair, the clothes we buy to complement our figures, and the TV shows, movies, magazines, and billboards that bombard us with "ideal" images of gender, size, and beauty that set the standards that we try to live up to in the first place. The class systems based on attractiveness and gender are extraordinarily "artificial" - yet only those practices that seem to subvert those classes (rather than reaffirm them) are ever characterized as such. ~ Julia Serano

I'm old enough to have lived in a country where, if you were willing to work hard, you could have a fairly nice life. You could support your family, and even get a shot at owning your own home. But you never thought you'd get a swimming pool. Now culture has hypnotised people into thinking they're really nothing if they're not wealthy and a Kardashian. ~ Tom Petty

Fervent prayer keeps your true identity in focus. ~ Priscilla Shirer

I'm not suggesting that all men are beautiful, vulnerable boys, but we all started out that way. What happened to us? How did we become monsters of feminist nightmares? The answer, of course, is that we underwent a careful and deliberate process of gender training, sometimes brutal, always dehumanizing, cutting away large chunks of ourselves. Little girls went through something similarly crippling. If the gender training was successful, we each ended up being half a person. ~ Frank Pittman

Children have a primal need to know who they are, to love and be loved by the two people whose physical union brought them here. To lose that connection, that sense of identity, is to experience a wound that no child-support check or fancy school can ever heal. ~ David Blankenhorn

These stories are important to me, not because they happen to be about South Asians, but because they're circling around a certain strain of loneliness that goes deeper than cultural dissonance, that has to do with the yearning to connect with someone else, or with some unreachable vision of home. ~ Tania James

What matters that I was born a woman, if I can cure your misfortunes? I pay my share of tolls and taxes, by giving men to the State. But you, you miserable greybeards, you contribute nothing to the public charges; on the contrary, you have wasted the treasure of our forefathers, as it was called, the treasure amassed in the days of the Persian Wars. You pay nothing at all in return; and into the bargain you endanger our lives and liberties by your mistakes. Have you one word to say for yourselves? ... Ah! don't irritate me, you there, or I'll lay my slipper across your jaws; and it's pretty heavy. ~ Aristophanes

It is important to remember that the Pacific Ocean covers a quarter of the world's surface and that each Pacific country has its own cultural, historical and ethnic identity. ~ Jenny Shipley

A common romantic script is the rescue. One person has a horrible past of abuse and betrayal and latches on to a romantic partner who wants to be the hero and protect her from all badness. The protection from harm quickly becomes a protection from consequences. The rescued princess uses the relationship as a safe environment where growth and becoming strong are not necessary. The relationship quickly becomes co-dependent. The victim cannot survive on her own, and the rescuer gets his identity from shielding her from the world. ~ Rory Miller

Jesus came to announce to us that an identity based on success, popularity and power is a false identity- an illusion! Loudly and clearly he says: 'You are not what the world makes you; but you are children of God. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

...the Constitution is an invitation for the president and Congress to struggle for the privilege of directing foreign policy. Although the president is the principal foreign policy actor, the Constitution delegates more specific foreign policy powers to Congress than to the executive. It designates the president as commander-in-chief and head of the executive branch, whereas it gives Congress the power to declare war and the power of the purse. The president can negotiate treaties and nominate foreign policy officials, but the Senate must approve them. Congress is also granted the power to raise and support armies, establish rules on naturalization, regulate foreign commerce, and define and punish offenses on the high seas.

Although the president is the chief foreign policy maker, Congress has a responsibility to be both an informed critic and constructive partner of the president. The ideal established by the founders is neither for one branch to dominate nor for there to be an identity of views between them. Rather, the founders wisely sought to encourage a creative tension between the president and Congress that would produce policies that advance national interests and reflect the views of the American people. Sustained consultation between the president and Congress is the most important mechanism for fostering an effective foreign policy with broad support at home and respect and punch overseas. In a world of both danger and opportunity, we need such a forei ~ Lee H. Hamilton

I don't want to lie about who I am, even if it doesn't matter. It's who I am. It's part of me. ~ John Corey Whaley

In Judaism praying for benefits is a very small part of the liturgy. Most of it is commitment of one's fortunes to God, and meditation on sacred writings which put in clear words the few great points of our religion. Its daily aim is a renewal of religious energy through an act which declares one's Jewish identity and one's hope in the Lord. ~ Herman Wouk

There is no single entity whose identity is changeless. All things are constantly changing. Nothing endures forever or contains a changeless element called a self. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

The fact is that one moves through life like someone moving with a lantern in a dark woods. A bit of the path ahead is illuminated, and a bit of the path behind. But the darkness follows hard on one's steps, and envelopes our trails as one proceeds. Were one to be able, as one never is, to retrace the steps by daylight, one would find that the terrain traversed bears, in reality, little relationship to what imagination and memory pictured. We are, toward the end of our lives, such different people, so far removed from the childhood figures with whom our identity links us, that the bond to those figures, like that of nations to their obscure prehistoric origins, is almost irrelevant. ~ George F. Kennan

I think that issues of gender have been discussed widely at Harvard. But I think I was chosen clearly on the merits, and I wish to operate as president on the merits. I think, on one level, we might say that I can affirm that women have the aptitude to do science or to do anything, including being president of Harvard. ~ Drew Gilpin Faust

In the early Buddhist view, then, a persons identity resides not in an enduring self but in his actions (karma)- that is in the choices that shape these actions. Because the dispositions formed by previous choices can be modified in turn by present behaviour, this identity as choice-maker is fluid, its experience alterable. While it is affected by the past, it can also break free of the past. ~ Joanna Macy

That nagging state of constant thought that exists somewhere between the ears and behind the eyes is the self. ~ Chris Matakas

Espionage has something of the quality of a dream. In the spy's world, as in dreams, the terrain is always uncertain. You put your foot on what looks like solid ground and it gives way under you and you go into a kind of free fall, turning slowly tail over tip and clutching onto things that are themselves falling. This instability, this myriad-ness, that the world takes on, is both the attraction and terror of being a spy. Attraction, because in the midst of such uncertainty you are never required to be yourself; whatever you do, there is another, alternative you standing invisibly to one side, observing, evaluating, remembering…. This is the secret power of the spy… it is the power to be and not be, to detach oneself from oneself, to be oneself and at the same time another. The trouble is, if I were always at least two versions of myself, so all others must be similarly twinned with themselves in this awful, slippery way. ~ John Banville

If people base their identity on identifying with authority, freedom causes anxiety. They must then conceal the victim in themselves by resorting to violence against others. ~ Arno Gruen

Any classification according to a singular identity polarizes people in a particular way, but if we take note of the fact that we have many different identities - related not just to religion but also to language, occupation and business, politics, class and poverty, and many others - we can see that the polarization of one can be resisted by a fuller picture. So knowledge and understanding are extremely important to fight against singular polarization. ~ Amartya Sen

The Hydra calls me but I am used to it
It calls me Everybody
But I know my name and do not answer ~ W.S. Merwin

I wish I had a magic wand to make things better, but therapy doesn't work that way. ~ Lynn I. Wilson

Do not define me by my gender or my socio-economic status, Noah Willis. Do not tell me who I am and do not tell me who society thinks I am and then put me in that box and expect me to stay there. Because, I swear to God, I will climb the hell out of that box and I will take that box you've just put me in and I will use that box to smash your face in until you're nothing more than a freckly, bloodied pulp. You got that, sweet cheeks? ~ Megan Jacobson