The Problem Of Identity Quotes

By what criteria can one decide which of a person's countless beliefs are primitive? The essential factor is that they are taken for granted: a person's primitive beliefs represent the basic truths he holds about physical reality, social reality, and himself and his own nature. Like all beliefs, conscious or unconscious, they have a personal aspect: they are rooted in the individual's experience and in the evidence of his senses. Like all beliefs, they also have a social aspect: with regard to every belief a person forms, he also forms some notion of how many other people have the experience and the knowledge necessary to share it with him, and of how close the agreement is among this group. Unlike other beliefs, however, primitive beliefs are normally not open to discussion or controversy. Either they do not come up in conversation because everyone shares them and everyone takes them for granted, or, if they do come up, they are virtually unassailable by outside forces. The criterion of social support is totally rejected; it is as if the individual said: "Nobody else could possibly know or have experienced what I have." Or, to quote a popular refrain: "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen."
 A person's primitive beliefs thus lie at the very core of his total system of beliefs, and they represent the subsystem in which he has the heaviest emotional commitment. ~ Milton Rokeach

The solution to the problem of identity is, get lost ~ Norman O. Brown

The problem with growing up fearing and expecting rejection is that you cannot enter into adult relationship in the expectation of happiness. ~ Dorothy Rowe

But solving problems of disease is not the same thing as creating health and happiness. ( ... ) Health and happiness are the expression of the manner in which the individual responds and adapts to the challenges that he meets in everyday life. ~ Rene Dubos

The problem ... is that most members of Congress don't pay attention to what's going on. ~ John McCain

It's not really my fault. The problem is that my mouth just comes out with these things. And you can't blame me for what my mouth does, can you? Curse this mouth. Do you think it might be possessed?'

The Pirate Captain looked in the mirror and made his mouth into a series of shapes he thought looked demonic. ~ Gideon Defoe

She says you're different, you know," he continues, turning back around to continue slicing his tomatoes. "I've been trying to see it… to see what she sees… but you don't seem any different to me."
I want to tell him it's because he's not looking hard enough, but that's a lie and I know it. The problem is, he's looking harder than Karissa is. She thinks I'm different because she wants me to be. And I'm trying to be. But I'm still me.
I can't be anybody but me.
At some point, every part of me became every part of that. The life isn't just something I lived… it was how I survived. It infused itself into every one of my cells, infecting every mitochondrion. It's in my blood and my bones, and unless you drain me dry and rip me to pieces, you'll never rid me of all of it.
It's like expecting a man to survive without a beating heart in his chest.
Expecting him to breathe without lungs.
Expecting him to fight when he has no reason to live.
It's like expecting a man to still be a man after taking away everything that makes him who he is.
I can be good to her.
I might even be good for her.
But that doesn't mean I'm good. ~ J.M. Darhower

Conflict is a violation of harmony. If you participate in it, you're part of the problem, not the solution. ~ Wayne Dyer

The problem for me is that 'Watchmen,' one of the great comics of all time, is a look at superheroes that has gone beyond the concept of or necessity for superheroes. ~ Joss Whedon

As long as a certain problem primarily affects a different country, in this case Italy, one might not put it at the very top of one's list of priorities. ~ Paolo Gentiloni

My father's not the type of person that teaches you by saying, 'Come here, son. I'm going to tell you about real estate.' You learn by watching it. If you don't pick it up, it's your problem. ~ Donald Trump, Jr.

The basic problem with the new species of global institutions is that they have not yet become aware of themselves as living. Once they do, they can become a place for the presencing of the whole as it might be, not just as it has been. ~ Betty Sue Flowers

When in doubt, vary, change, solve the problem, seize the opportunity, experiment, try something new (consistent, of course, with the core ideology) - even if you can't predict precisely how things will turn out. Do something. If one thing fails, try another. Fix. Try. Do. Adjust. Move. Act. No matter what, don't sit still. ~ Jim Collins

I lean on my friends for support. It's better than leaning on a crutch, because your friends won't accuse you of chugging down all the water out of the goldfish bowl. My friends know I have a drinking problem. ~ Jarod Kintz

The overwhelming problem in the world today, everyone knows, is terrorism, where people in the name of religion kill each other, kill others just to go to heaven, and thinking only they will go to heaven. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Maybe the biggest problem is that there's no empathy. Nobody puts themselves in the place of others. Everyone thinks they are the only one to suffer. Or that they're the only ones who like ice cream or take their kids on vacation. ~ Marjane Satrapi

The problem for us, as viewers, is that we want famous people who are passionate about the things they're famous for, because that makes them worthy of the attention. But I think many of those famous people just want to be famous. ~ Bo Burnham

The only Bible-honoring conclusion is, of course, that Genesis 1-11 is actual historical truth, regardless of any scientific or chronological problems thereby entailed. ~ Henry M. Morris

It is impossible to attack the problem of poverty in the industrialized or the developing world effectively unless the extent to which poverty is a women's problem is recognized. ~ Hilda Scott

There are probably more of us. If we're all zombies, then
there's got to be more. I say we go up to the cemetery and find out."
"Can we get soda on the way?"
Nothing washes down brains better than a can of Coca Cola and a little shameless product placement. (Hey, the undead do have an image problem.)
"Soda and cemeteries! Soda and cemeteries!" they chanted. "And braaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiins!"
"Hey Bernie, you're getting pretty good at that."
"Okay, you try."
"Braaa - " the zombie belched, " - aiiinsss."
Earl heaved the coroner's body out of the way. They headed off for the cemetery, each trying furiously to perfect their own, unique and personal call for brains like an undead choir, out of tune.
"Braaaaiiiiins!" "Braaiiiiiiiinns!" "Braaaaaaaaaains!" "Bray-uns."
"That was just awful." ...Away into the night. ~ Daniel Younger

The fear really hits you. That's what you feel first. And then it's the anger and frustration. Part of the problem is how little we understand about the ultimate betrayal of the body when it rebels against itself. ~ Charles Bronson

Mom, she was a distraction. At least that's what I thought at the time. And she could have cost me my warlocks."

"Is this my son standing in front of me, telling me he placed compulsion on my sheriff, a vice-director of the ASD and his warlocks, something he promised he would never do, just to cover his ass and destroy any affection anybody might have for Breanne?"

Gavril sat heavily behind his desk. He didn't understand how his mother discovered what he'd done, but she had. "Mom, I don't know how to make this right," he began. "If I remove my compulsion, they'll know I made them forget."

"And you see this as a problem because?" I snapped.

"For starters, I'll lose my warlocks. Yeah, I deserve that," he held up a hand to hold off my immediate response. I was about to tell him he deserved to lose his warlocks. He'd promised them long ago that he'd never place compulsion. Mind cloud or not, he'd broken that promise.

"Would you like me to tell Ildevar that you fucked with a vice-director of the ASD? Breanne has saved Ildevar's life twice. What reaction do you think you'll get if he learns of this? What I don't know, because your compulsion is still in place, is how much they cared about Breanne. Which of your warlocks cared about her, by the way? Gavin was too ashamed to explain any of this to me." I was getting wound up and my voice was getting louder. I'd yelled at this son more after he became an adult than I ever had when ~ Connie Suttle

To know me is to love me. This cliche is popular for a reason, because most of us, I imagine, believe deep in our hearts that if anyone truly got to know us, they'd truly get to love us - or at least know why we're the way we are. The problem in life, maybe the central problem, is that so few people ever seem to have sufficient curiosity to do the job on us that we know we deserve. ~ Roger Ebert

How do you wake up? It was one thing to know that you had been asleep all your life, but something else to wake up from it, to find out you were really alive and it wasn't anybody's fault but your own. Of course that was the problem.

All right. Everything is a dream. Nothing hangs together. You move from one dream to another and there is no reason for the change. Your eyes see things and your ears hear, but nothing has any reason behind it. It would be easier to believe in God. Then you could wake up and yawn and stretch and grin at a world that was put together on a plan of mercy and death, punishment for evil, joy for good, and if the game was crazy at least it had rules. But that didn't make sense. It had never made any sense. The trouble was, now that he was not asleep and not awake, what he saw and heard didn't make sense either.

Mishmash, he thought. You know enough to know how you feel is senseless, but you don't know enough to know why. ~ Don Carpenter

We are all descended from cavemen who broke the skulls of their enemies with rocks for fun or profit. But that hardly mitigates the crimes of a man who does the same thing today. I see no problem judging the behavior of the Islamic State and its apologists from the vantage point of the West's high horse, because we've earned the right to sit in that saddle. ~ Jonah Goldberg

I have a bit of a problem with 'American Idol.' Forgive me, but it's difficult for me to watch. I can't help but think of people being exploited. On the other hand, I'm really enjoying 'Glee.' ~ Lesley Gore

A great tide of civilization governs how humans do things. When that tide goes out, we centralize, establish command and control structures, and attempt to find efficiencies in large batches and long queues. When the water starts to come back in, we break down those structures, start to drive control down into the hands of 'common' folk, and attempt to find efficiencies in the quick decisions that get made by people closest to the problem. The tide is coming back in and will probably continue to ebb that direction for the lifespan of anyone alive at the time of this writing. ~ Max Guernsey III

Our fascination with the outlaw, the killer, the meth dealer, is emblematic of a pretty embarrassing problem: we trim the fat of evil. We size it up, add a glitter to it never present in reality, and make it pretty for the cameras. It looks more boring and crude than anything else, so we give it a tummy tuck. ~ John Thomas Allen

We encountered an awful lot of problems from the drastic leap we took with Wind Waker. I think we will be a bit more careful in the future, but if we find a new approach that not just the developers, but also the users would enjoy then I think we will want to break new ground again. But we haven't found such an approach yet. ~ Eiji Aonuma

A fly with a brain the size of a salt grain has the behavioral repertoire nearly as complex as a much larger animal such as a mouse. That's a super-interesting problem from an engineering perspective. ~ Michael Dickinson

I'd assumed my mate would be female. As Alpha it's my responsibility to provide an heir."
"So your problem is he's male? Or is it because he's a werecat? Or do you even know, Alpha Lovelock?" I snapped because really, it was beginning to sound like this dumbass was going to reject his mate. Was it an epidemic happening with rejecting mates lately?
Dolf cut his eyes at me. "Remi, that's not how you speak to - "
"Watch your tone when speaking to my Alpha," Temple snapped.
"Why should I when it sounds like your Alpha's on the verge of rejecting my friend?" I hissed at Temple.
"Beta Remi." Carter's voice was calm when he spoke. That quieted me quicker than anything. "I apologize for the misunderstanding, and I appreciate
your quick defense of your friend. Understand, please, I didn't mean to imply I planned to reject Aidric. To be honest I'm somewhat in shock."
"Damn, have you ever been with a man?" I asked.
"Not that it's any of your business, but yes, I have," Alpha Lovelock said. "I'm bi."
"Um, I don't want to rain on anybody's parade either, but this might be a good time to point out who is not taking part in this discussion," Marshell said.
"I imagine he's also in shock," Dolf added. "As we all are. ~ M.A. Church

I always say leave things at the door. Whether it's at your audition or at your house, leave the problems of the day away. Keep persevering, stick to yourself. Don't do what other people ask, do what you want! ~ Jenna Ushkowitz

It's not that. I could manage over a hundred worlds like Verdia if so needed. No, the problem is that I have yet to discover why. Do you ever wonder about why, Alex?" "All the time, Omni," Alex replied, drifting off to sleep in his leather chair. The significance of a computer asking humanity's greatest question escaped him, "all the time." Chapter ~ M. Andrew Reid

For me it was never about money, but solving problems for the future of humanity. ~ Elon Musk

I glance left, then to the right. Disoriented. Lost. Not knowing which way is home. But that's been the problem since the beginning. The root of all my evils. ~ Katie McGarry

In whatever you choose to do, do it because it's hard, not because it's easy. Math and physics and astrophysics are hard. For every hard thing you accomplish, fewer other people are out there doing the same thing as you. That's what doing something hard means. And in the limit of this, everyone beats a path to your door because you're the only one around who understands the impossible concept or who solves the unsolvable problem. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The current economic crisis ... has numerous causes and sends a powerful message about the need for a profound revision of the model of global economic development. It's an acute symptom that is added to other more grave and already well-known ones, such as the continued imbalance between wealth and poverty, the scandal of hunger, the ecological emergency and the problem of unemployment, which has now become general. In this context a strategic re-launching of agriculture appears decisive. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

Buying baubles, are we?" She flipped the box open, blinked. "Oh my."
"I guess I should tell you, I bought it for your mother. Gonna ask her to marry me." He pulled
himself up a bit on the pillow and slid straight down again. "Got a problem with that?"
"I might, seeing as you proposed to me five minutes ago, you fickle bastard." A little teary-eyed,
she sat on the side of the bed. "It's beautiful, David. She'll love it. She loves you."
"She's everything I've ever wanted. Beautiful, beautiful Pilar. Inside and out. Second chances all
around. I'll be careful with her. ~ Nora Roberts

As a single atom man is an enigma: as a whole he is a mathematical problem. As an individual he is a free agent, as a species the offspring of necessity. ~ William Winwood Reade

Evil is never in a rush. It creeps up slowly. It doesn't hide, but confronts you in broad daylight. It gives decades of warnings, even centuries at times. Time is never the problem when you battle Evil. The problem is the will to fight it. ~ Amish Tripathi

(1) statement of the problem, (2) hypotheses as to the cause of the problem, (3) experiments designed to test each hypothesis, (4) predicted results of the experiments, (5) observed results of the experiments and (6) conclusions from the results of the experiments. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Because I was so involved with Barbara [Stanwyck], I was off-limits for other women, which was something of a problem for the studio. They wanted to promote the image of a carefree young stud - never my style - so I had publicity dates with young actresses around town like Lori Nelson or Debra Paget. This was a relic of the days when the studio system was in its prime. The studio would arrange for two young stars-in-waiting to go out to dinner and a dance and assign a photographer to accompany them. The result would be placed in a fan magazine. It was a totally artificial story documenting a nonexistent relationship, but it served to keep the names of young talents in front of the public. As far as I was concerned, it was part of the job, and usually pleasant enough. When reporters would ask me about my romantic life, which they did incessantly, I had to say things like, "If I go out with one woman a few times, it's considered a romance. If I date a lot of girls, I'm a Casanova. It's one of those 'heads-you-win-tails-I-lose' deals. I don't think it's anybody's business what I do." The last sentence contained my true feelings. ~ Robert J. Wagner

I don't know if I'm particularly funny, I mean one of my legs is shorter than the other one, it makes everything look very awkward, so I can just pretty much look like an idiot, but I don't know whether I can be like witty. It could be a problem. ~ Robert Pattinson