Self Identity Quotes

Our emotional valence – positive or negative experiences – affects not only how we narrate childhood events, but also which memories we retain. The interplay between a person encountering environment experiences meshed with self-editing of various aspects of their complex memory system results in a person becoming more than a collection of memories: a person creates their personalized version of a self. A person integrates many experiences into creating their being. Personal encounters with other people as well as moments of personal solitude contemplating ideas and personal existence congeal to form the depiction of a self. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Am I so terribly insecure that every time life hits me I must immediately run off to some mirror and gaze into it in order to make certain that I am who I thought I was? Frankly, what I'd much rather do is rest in who God says I am. Then I can throw all my mirrors away instead of throwing away all my time looking into them. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

We need to know who we are and then stand strong ~ Sunday Adelaja

Our evolving self-concept guides our daily actions, organizes our information processing, and fosters a stout mental predisposition that assists our ego maintain a fibrous self-image. Self-concept is not restricted to a bare assessment of what role we presently fulfill in society. Our self-image is an endogenous alloy that includes an agglomeration of past selves and possible future selves. Future selves or 'possible selves' represent a person's ideas of what they might become, what they aspire to become, and what they are afraid of becoming. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

There is a terrible blindness in the love that wants only to accommodate. It's not only to do with omissions and half-truths. It implants a lack of being in the speaker and robs the self of an identity without which it is impossible for one to grow close to another. ~ Alexander Theroux

Unlock untie yourself from people who rope u into redundancy ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

To know our refuse is to know ourselves. We mark our own trail from past to present with what we've used and consumed, fondled, rejected, outgrown. ~ Jane Avrich

Who you want to be is already inside of you waiting for you to confront who you are and tag them in to help you win the battle of the mind. ~ Sanjo Jendayi

The more isolated and disconnected we are, the more shattered and distorted our self-identity. We are not healthy when we are alone. We find ourselves when we connect to others. Without community we don't know who we are ...
When we live outside of healthy community, we not only lose others. We lose ourselves ... Who we understand ourselves to be is dramatically affected for better or worse by those we hold closest to us. ~ Erwin Raphael McManus

We use the mind to create ourselves. Stuck amid the inevitable gaps between the mint of imagination and the postholes of actuality, we stutter step through the stratum of objective and subjective reality. We constantly amend our internal mental maps. Each day we awaken from the nighttime dream world with a revised identity of ourselves. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself. ~ Gertrude Stein

Humankind's greatest gift is that we are indeterminate beings. Unlike the tough and leathery seed of an acorn, which will grow into a magnificent oak tree, none of us has a predetermined final configuration of our ultimate essence. Our mental temperament is pliable. We make conscious and subconscious choices that govern who we become. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I lost my public self, or had it stolenIn a way, it was a form of identity theft. ~ Monica Lewinsky

In my opinion, to assume a persons' motivations, life experiences or self identity may, at best, demonstrate one's ignorance and, at worst, display one's hubris. ~ Tristan A. Star

When an entire group of people come together and try to make some kind of identity out of what they don't have, they usually end up convincing themselves they can do whatever they damn well please. ~ Christopher Rice

Barry Schlenker's self-identity theory (1982) asserts that self-presentation is an attempt to control information about your identity before real or imagined audiences - including yourself. People try to provide explanations of their own conduct; they try to construct an identity that is satisfying to themselves and that explains their behavior in a favorable light. One of the criteria of a good explanation is believability; that is, explanations must fit with existing knowledge. Schlenker argues that people are not motivated to attain cognitive consistency as an end in itself; rather, they need to provide a believable and self -beneficial account of their conduct, and consistency is a by-product of that. The need to provide explanations for your conduct results in the construction of an internally consistent view of reality. ~ James Kennedy

Human being's possess the cognitive ability to survey and study the biological and cultural constraints that influence us in order to gain an enhanced understanding of who each of us are. Comprehension of what comprises a self allows human beings to monitor and regulate their thoughts and actions and therefore revise and modify their sense of self. How much conscious control we assert over our minds as well as what decisions through default we leave essentially unregulated and in the sole providence of the unconscious mind determines our self-identity. Self-identity in turns affects personal decision-making, which alters our external world. The combined impact of millions of people making conscious choices exerts a profound impact upon reality, the physical world that is constantly in flux. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The happy life is impossible without finding an answer to the question "why am I here? What am doing here? ~ Sunday Adelaja

Who you are depends on who you meet. ~ Margaret J. Wheatley

We are each a product of our biological endowments, culture, and personal history. Culture ideology and cultural events along with transmitted cultural practices influences each of us. We are each the product of our collective interchanges. Our county's domestic and interlinked international conflicts fuse us together. We are each a molecule in the helix of human consciousness joined in a physical world. We form a coil of connective tissue soldered together by cultural links. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

One is what one remembers: no more, no less. ~ Jan Struther

Nia learned that our self-identity and connection to our roots is so powerful it can impact not only the course of our lives but also that of generations to come. ~ Jenny Delacruz

Fame is damaging when people become reliant on it for their sense of self, and their identity, when fame is linked to how you see yourself. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

Don't let them make anything of you but yourself, that's all. ~ L.M. Montgomery

My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what that self had been, or was, or was sometimes capable of being. And only recently I'd been going on about how the witnesses to our lives decrease, and with them our essential corroboration. Now I had some all too unwelcome corroboration of what I was, or had been. ~ Julian Barnes

And yes, there definitely are many good desires. For example, without the desire for food we would not stay alive. It is when our desire becomes an unquenchable craving or obsession, or causes us to do harm to ourselves or others, that it creates suffering and unhappiness. If you have ever been hurt because you tied your happiness or well-being to a person, place, opinion, self-identity, behavior, or goal, then you have firsthand experience of desire. ~ Don Altman

With that said, don't be trifling about being a feminist. It really infuriates me when high-profile people in your position self-identity as feminists just because it's trendy at the moment and then don't do any of the, you know, actual work of trying to make things equal for everybody. You're going to have to roll up your sleeves and get dirty in order to create a society that takes women as seriously as the men. The type that encourages us to not define ourselves by who we go to bed with at night, but by who and what we see reflected back at us in the mirror in the morning. The type that recognizes that women are not a monolith and that they have wildly different experiences informed by their race and/or sexuality. Be that beacon of light that we can look toward. Be the feminist who will help normalize the idea of Feminism for society. Be the feminist everyone needs. No presh. 3C. ~ Phoebe Robinson

A Frenchman, as any Frenchman will tell you, is a difficult condition to abide, as much a privilege as a responsibility. To maintain the appropriate standards of excellence, this superlative of grace, was a burden not so light even in the homeland, and immeasurably more difficult in the colonies. Being both French and a stoat had resulted in a more or less constant crisis of self-identity - one which Bonsoir often worked to resolve, in classic Gallic fashion, via monologue. ~ Daniel Polansky

In 1902, a sociologist named Charles Horton Cooley devised a concept called the looking-glass self, which posits that s person's sense of identity is shaped by interaction with social groups and the ways in which the individual thinks he or she is perceived by others. Cooley believed this process involved three steps: •You imagine how you appear to other people. •You imagine the judgment of other people. •You base your feelings about yourself on how you think [you] appear to other people. ~ Steven Hyden

Then my life crashed and burned down: trials, men, drama, no self-love, no identity. A little identity, but not a lot of love for myself, my life. ~ Mary J. Blige

I am made in the image of God. Therefore, if I don't know God I can't know me. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

From The Twelve Enlightenments
Observe your own body. It breathes. You breathe when you are asleep, when you are no longer conscious of your own ideas of self-identity. Who, then, is breathing? The collection of information that you mistakenly think it's you is not the main protagonist in this drama called the breath. In fact, you are not breathing; breath is naturally happening to you. You can purposely end your own life, but you cannot purposely keep your own life going. The expression, "My life" is actually an oxymoron, a result of ignorance and mistaken assumption. You don't posses life; life expresses itself through you. Your body is a flower that life let bloom, a phenomenon created by life. ~ Ilchi Lee

A lot of mothers incorrectly see the meaning of their lives as being the designer or creator of their child's life ~ Sunday Adelaja

We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves. ~ Andre Gide

I've tried to be clear about who I am, and be as open as possible with the press, and speak extremely candidly and openly about stuff. I feel like in almost every instance, it's completely backfired, and I feel like people have all these kind of absurd ideas about the way I think about myself, and my own self-identity. ~ Zachary Cole Smith

A person's selection of a vocation is a crucial step with significant ramification relating to their degree of financial success, personal happiness, and sense of contributing the best part of themselves – their unique talent – to the community. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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

It was the slave's continuing desire for recognition that was the motor which propelled history forward, not the idle complacency and unchanging self-identity of the master ~ Francis Fukuyama

Hold unto your Dreams and Visions for our heros past
did and history have written their names in Gold ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

Who are theologians? What kind of self-identity could or should a theologian claim? Should a theologian be a defender or transmitter of Christian _tradition_? What if the _tradition_ itself carries a dark side, implicitly or explicitly, bounded by religious or cultural superiorism, ethnocentrism, homophobism, exclusive nationalism, sexism, racism, and so forth? What kind of _identity_ would then justify my rule as theologian? This question has been lingering in my mind throughout the time I have been working on cosmopolitan theology. it may sound simple, but for me the identity issue has been fundamental. ~ Namsoon Kang

The emptiness and silence of this apartment compounded by my knowledge that I was, for the first time in my life, the only person sleeping in my home. This forced me to realize that, while I wanted to be fiercely myself, I also wanted someone around to see me so it. ~ Hank Green

One has to know what is the ultimate goal of our life. The ultimate goal of our evolution is to become the Spirit, which is the reflection of God Almighty in our heart. That is self identity and also self knowledge. Also, one becomes one with the all-pervading Divine power of love. Our awareness is enlightened by the Spirit and Divine vibrations start flowing through our central nervous system enlightening our being. ~ Nirmala Srivastava

Grand failures – the misfortunes of living – provide human beings with an identity. A person is the sum of his or her grievous errors. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I have managed to establish an identity that is based on my internal self, and for that I feel tremendously lucky. ~ David Rakoff

Being gay is not just what I do, but who I am. It is part of how I choose to live my life even if I never chose. ~ Johnny Rich

Julie helped him to feel defined. He was Julie's boyfriend. Julie's fiance. Julie's provocation. He came into focus when he stood beside her, despite the fact that the person standing beside her was mostly not him. ~ Meg Rosoff

[M]y discovering my own identity doesn't mean that I work it out in isolation, but that I negotiate it through dialogue, partly overt, partly internal, with others. ~ Charles Taylor

Narrative nonfiction is an act of conception and construction; it is formation of a personal legend from the mist of memory using mental hydraulics plied with the tools of logic, structure, design, and imagination. An engaged mind possesses a documentary sensibility that fabricates a memoirist identity, which alliance mollifies their bleak interior critic. A conscientious mind hews a residue of meaning from the verisimilitude of a person's metafictional baggage. A basic impulse of all free people is to speak to an appreciative audience. Writing the story of our life constitutes asserting the universal human right to declare and define who we are. When we write our story, we become a stakeholder of our place in the world, we affirm the right to shape our future, and avow the verity to heal our torn souls. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I don't need to paint a picture of what I want my life to look like. What I need to do is to study the picture that God painted of me so that I can better understand how to live out the splendor of the painting. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Not one of us can lie or pretend. We're all fixed in good faith in a certain concept of ourselves. ~ Luigi Pirandello

To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand. ~ Charles Taylor

spiritual practice is conspiratorial rather than inspirational; it conspires to strip away everything you use to maintain the illusion of certainty, security, and self-identity. Where spiritual writing seeks to bind you all the more tightly to the self you imagine yourself to be, writing as a spiritual practice intends to free you ~ Rami M. Shapiro

( ... )I don't know who I am. I look like Stephen Herondale, and I act like a Lightwood and I talk like my father- like Valentine. So I see myself in your eyes and i try to be that person and I think faith might be enough to make me who you wnat me to be. (Jace, to Clary) ~ Cassandra Clare

Until you have answered the question "Who am I" you will not be capable of living your own life ~ Sunday Adelaja

We rigidify our self-image to portray a certain identity to the world, which is one of the key impediments to authenticity. ~ Chip Conley

The child will leave the nest. The best paint job will crack. The best play will become boring. The best work will grow tedious. The best art will lose meaning. The greatest creation will decay. Behind all this, lies my true self. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

So, Eva Nine, you must sometimes disregard what someone is saying and focus instead on what they are doing. Watch and observe. That is when one reveals his true self. ~ Tony DiTerlizzi

The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life. ~ Wayne Dyer

At what whirling moment had she halted and turned, unbeknownst to herself, the other way? ~ Colum McCann

Too often we confuse 'discovering who we are' with 'discovering who we want to be.' And if we commit to the former it will take care of the latter. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Was this how a mutiny was sparked? In a moment of heedlessness, so that one became a stranger to the person one had been a moment before? Or was it the other way around? That this was when one recognized the stranger that one had always been to oneself; that all one's loyalties and beliefs had been misplaced? ~ Amitav Ghosh

Thinking is a personalized activity that can lead us into a state of happiness or cause us to be sad. Who we are becomes a product of how we think. What we think about and how we integrate knowledge into a comprehensive schema regulates our evolving self-identity. The precision of the human mind and the interplay between cognitive thinking and reactive emotions plays a central role in self-identity. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

There's a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside. ~ Pearl Bailey

[C]ultivated risk-taking represents an 'experiment with trust' (in the sense of basic trust) which consequently has implications for an individual's self-identity. ( ... ) In cultivated risk-taking, the encounter with danger and its resolution are bound up in the same activity, whereas in other consequential settings the payoff of chosen strategies may not be seen for years afterwards. ~ Anthony Giddens

Listening to music, reading literature, writing, and extended periods of personal introspection provide four prongs of the incitements available to form a conscious and subconscious designation of self. Other potential incentives that contribute to self-identity include religion and cultural events as well as painting, sculpture, dance, films, newspapers, television, Internet surfing, web sites, and online message boards. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

...they had succumbed to an impersonal and anonymous mode of consciousness which precluded personal feeling and which was devoid of a secure sense of self-identity. Everything tended to be seen in 'abstract' terms, as theoretical possibilities which could be contemplated and compared but to the concrete realization of which people were unwilling to commit themselves. If they attended to their own attitudes or emotions it was through a thick haze of pseudo-scientific expressions or cliche-ridden phrases which they had picked up from books or newspapers rather than in the direct light of their own inner experience. Living had become a matter of knowing rather than doing; accumulating information and learning things by rote as opposed to taking decisions that bore the stamp of individual passion or conviction. ~ Patrick L. Gardiner

As Hubert Benoit said, it is not the identification with the ego that is the problem, but the exclusive nature of the identification. When our self-identity expands beyond the ego, into the deeper psychic, then even into the Unborn and One Taste, the ego is simply taken up and subsumed in a grander identity. But the ego itself remains as the functional self in the gross realm, and it might even appropriately be intensified and made more powerful, simply because it is now plugged into the entire Kosmos. ~ Ken Wilber

The power of ignorance can make a powerful man look powerless ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The body is an object in which we are all privileged, or doomed, to dwell, the source of feelings of well-being and pleasure, but also the site of illnesses and strains. ( ... ) [I]t is an action-system, a mode of praxis, and its practical immersion in the interactions of day-to-day life is an essential part of the sustaining of a coherent sense of self-identity. ~ Anthony Giddens

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

I can tell you who I am, but I'd rather have you watch who I am. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

There are many things that have distorted the person inside you from what you were created to be ~ Sunday Adelaja

What you believe really does affect how you live, how you look at God, how you look at the world around you, how you look at yourself, and how you feel about reality. What you believe is vital for your whole worldview, your self-identity, and your understanding of your mission. ~ James T. Bradford

We alone control our final form through our conscious actions. We become the product of the movement of our mind and our physical actions. The joint composition of our personal beliefs coupled with performing purposeful deeds brings forth form and tangible appearance to our thoughts. To discover our special radiance we must gain freedom from all forces of oppression. We must break free from the limitations of a shallow ego in an effort to give birth to our translucent state of creative consciousness. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

In Canada, when we speak of water, we're speaking of ourselves. Canadians are known to be unextravagant, and one explanation of this might be that we know that wasted water means a diminished collective soul; polluted waters mean a sickened soul. Water is the basis of our self-identity, and when we dream of canoes and thunderstorms and streams and even snowballs, we're dreaming about our innermost selves. ~ Douglas Coupland

You still have only one self and one identity. However, self, identity and personality are not things, they are not objects, and they certainly are not rigid. Instead, they are biological processes built within the brain from numerous interactive components, step by step, over a period of time. ~ Antonio Damasio

Who has deceived thee as oft as thyself. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The roots of all living things are tied together. Deep in the ground of being, they tangle and embrace. This understanding is expressed in the term nonduality. If we look deeply, we find that we do not have a separate self-identity, a self that does not include sun and wind, earth and water, creatures and plants, and one another. ~ Joan Halifax

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

The self identity of Man is transcultural, and thus cannot have any single point of reference. Pluralism is not synonymous with tolerance of a variety of opinions. Pluralism amounts to the recognition of the unthinkable, the absurd, and up to a limit, intolerable. Reality in itself does not need to be transparent intelligible. ~ Raimon Panikkar

Many of us will not realize who we are because we do not want to go through the pain and trials ~ Sunday Adelaja

If I lost control of the business I'd lose myself-or at least the ability to be myself. Owning myself is a way to be myself. ~ Oprah Winfrey

A thing that happens to migrants is that they lose many of the traditional things which root identity, which root the self. ~ Salman Rushdie

Identity is marketed in national capitalism as a property. It is something you can purchase, or purchase a relation to. Or it is something you already own that you can express: my masculinity, my queerness . But identity need not be simply a caption for an image of an unchangeable concrete self. It is also a theory of the future, of history. ~ Lauren Berlant

I think a lot of self-identity and inner-personal development is hampered by consumerism and capitalism because we see ourselves as a reflection of the TV, rather than as a reflection of the people who are around us, truly. ~ Aloe Blacc

Inside us there is a place that is our true self. ~ Orson Scott Card

When marketers influence habits, they influence peoples' self-identity. And so when a group or company does something that doesn't correspond to our core values, it feels like a betrayal. ~ Charles Duhigg

My identity is not up for Debate. My whole self is not an negotiation. ~ Omar Lee

It was as if my sould had left my body, floated up to the ceiling, and was watching me destroy my own career with one deliberately assaultive punch. (Dark City Lights) ~ Peter Hochstein

Self-identity is about content not the container that carry
the identity,contextual value and not a solo island. It is about conception and not just a birth process. ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

You have to be your own person. You can't let people's opinions determine how you think about yourself. There's a difference between identity and self-identity. ~ Amy Tan

Disparate from animals, human beings are constantly interpreting who we are. The mental rhythm of the human mind is a stream of thought that is constantly in motion. The development of conscious awareness is a lifetime process of interpreting the external world by employing the tools of observation, memory, and imagination; supplemented by rational thoughts, meditative reflections, intuition, and freelance conjure. Every day we can consciously work to alter our being or remain mentally stagnant. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

It is a worthy quest to not simply develop a sense of identity, but become the magnanimous version of the self. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Identifying someone by his, or her, outward appearance is often the first and most common error in the world ~ Sunday Adelaja

Identify your life mission and gift ~ Sunday Adelaja

The inability to move from one phase of life and change one's self-identity is, the anxiety of always. ~ Sherry Turkle

Europe was not born in the early Middle Ages. No common identity in 1000 linked Spain to Russia, Ireland to the Byzantine empire (in what is now the Balkans, Greece and Turkey), except the very weak sense of community that linked Christian polities together. There was no common European culture, and certainly not any Europe-wide economy. There was no sign whatsoever that Europe would, in a still rather distant future, develop economically and militarily, so as to be able to dominate the world. Anyone in 1000 looking for future industrialization would have put bets on the economy of Egypt, not of the Rhineland and Low Countries, and that of Lancashire would have seemed like a joke. In politico-military terms, the far south-east and south-west of Europe, Byzantium and al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), provided the dominant states of the Continent, whereas in western Europe the Carolingian experiment (see below, Chapters 16 and 17) had ended with the break-up of Francia (modern France, Belgium and western Germany), the hegemonic polity for the previous four hundred years. The most coherent western state in 1000, southern England, was tiny. In fact, weak political systems dominated most of the Continent at the end of our period, and the active and aggressive political systems of later on in the Middle Ages were hardly visible.

National identities, too, were not widely prominent in 1000, even if one rejects the association between nationalism and modernity made in much contemp ~ Chris Wickham

As far as all of our identities are dependent on how other people imagine us we are all making ourselves and each other up all the time ~ John Green

These same ABCs couldn't speak Chinese and didn't care---but you don't have shit without your native tongue. African slaves were forced by threat of physical punishment to abandon their native languages, but a lot of us just gave ours up with a shrug---these Uncle Chans convinced us to assimilate, shut the fuck up, and play the part. What they didn't understand is that after your have the money and degrees, you can't buy your identity back. I wasn't worried about degrees, but I cared about my roots. Even if I hated what it meant to be an Asian in t he American wilderness, i respected the Chinese home I was raised in. Usually I wasn't so vocal about Asian identity, but without my parents around, I felt a sudden duty to say something myself. It's funny how annoying I thought my mom was, but as soon as she wasn't around, i carried the torch for her. ~ Eddie Huang