Identity Quotes

I am volatile for one, rigid for another, angular as an icicle in silver, or voluptuous as a candle flame in gold.

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then

I can never turn my back on a city that made me.

Although the butterfly and the caterpillar are completely different, they are one and the same.

The hatchet must fall on the block; the oak must be cleft to the centre. The weight of the world is on my shoulders. Here is the pen and the paper; on the letters in the wire basket I sign my name, I, I, and again I.

I never really knew about my ancestors until this year, when I learned that the name Cobain was Irish. My parents had never bothered to find that stuff out.

Who will you have to become, to achieve all you want?

The real you is not a puppet that life pushes around, the real deep down you is the whole universe.

You need no time to open yourself to the power of now and so awaken to who you are beyond name and form and realize that in the depth of your being, you are already complete, whole, one with the timeless essence of all life.

I ain't the same person I was when I bit that guy's ear off.

As a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor School of Creative mathematics, I honestly do not know how old I am.

All of childhood's unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood.

The rose is a rose,And was always a rose.But the theory now goesThat the apple's a rose,And the pear is, and so'sThe plum, I suppose.The dear only knowsWhat will next prove a rose.You, of course, are a rose -But were always a rose.

My writing is nothing, my boxing is everything.

You know these things as thoughts, but your thoughts are not your experiences, they are an echo and after-effect of your experiences: as when your room trembles whe na carriage goes past. I however am sitting in the carriage, and often I am the carriage itself. Ina man who thinks like this, the dichotomy between thinking and feeling, intellect and passion, has really disappeared. He feels his thoughts. He can fall in love with an idea. An idea can make him ill.

Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship.

A race of people is like and individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.

Cause see they call me a menace; and if the shoe fits I'll wear it.

From the Distance You only See My Light; Come closer and You will Know that I Am You.

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

Happiness is inward, and not outward; and so, it does not depend on what we have, but on what we are.

Pity the man who inherits a million and isn't a millionaire. Here's what would be pitiful, if your income grew and you didn't.

The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.

Don't let anybody take your manhood.

I'm half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I'd be in a hell of a mess!

I take thee at thy word: Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized; Henceforth I never will be Romeo.

Life isn't about finding yourself; it's about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined.

I have too much imagination to be a housewife

You have, you can only answer it this way: by turning it around. Can the negro - who is the victim of the system - escape the collective stigma that is placed upon all Negroes in this country?

I never made `Who's Who,' but I'm featured in `What's That?'

Why do people speak of great men in terms of nationality? Great Germans, great Englishmen? Goethe always protested against being called a German poet. Great men are simply men and are not to be considered from the point of view of nationality, nor should the environment in which they were brought up be taken into account.

I believe only in French culture and consider everything in Europe that calls itself 'culture' a misunderstanding, not to speak of German culture.

Why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from Birth must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.

Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while

Frequently my life has been likened to a Greek tragedy, and the actress in me cannot deny that comparison.

I'd like to be my old self again but I'm still trying to find it

I don't like walking around with people thinking I'm doing uncool s--, because there's nothing I'm doing that's uncool. It's all innovative. You just might not understand it yet. But it's cool. Family is super cool. Going home to one girl every night is super cool. Just going home and getting on the floor and playing with your child is super cool. Not wearing a red leather jacket, and just looking like a dad and s--, is like super cool. Having someone that I can call Mom again. That s-- is super cool.

A person's tragedy does not make up their entire life. A story carves deep grooves into our brains each time we tell it. But we aren't one story. We can change our stories. We can write our own.

As a man I am not a killer. I’m an artist and a modern person. I’ll choose sanity.

Here's something that's contrary to popular belief: I actually don't like thinking. I think people think I like to think a lot. And I don't. I do not like to think at all.

Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot.

They are not men, they are not women, they are Americans.

I had to use my wits or else I'd have been sunk - and nothings going to sink me. Everyone was always pulling at me, tugging at me, as if they wanted a piece of me. It was always, 'do this, do that,' and not just on the job but off, too. God, I've tried to stay intact, whole.

I don't want to play sex roles any more. I'm tired of being known as the girl with the shape.

We know nothing about Africa, although our roots are there in terms of our forbearers. But I mean as far as the average Negro today, he knows nothing about Africa. And I think he's got to face the fact that he is an American, his culture is basically American, and one becomes adjusted to this when he realizes what, what he is.

When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique.

White is an attitude.

Don't be surprised if I behave like a savage. I am a savage

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

You, yourself, are the eternal energy which appears as this Universe. You didn't come into this world; you came out of it. Like a wave from the ocean.

I press to my centre, and find there is something there.

It's much more fun to play something you're nothing like than what you are... It's much easier to hide yourself in a character.

We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge - and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves - how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much. Language consists of five basic sounds produced by the vocal cords. They are the vowels a, e, i, o, u. The other sounds are consonants produced by air pressure: s, f, g, and so forth. Do you believe some combination of such basic sounds could ever explain who you are, or the ultimate purpose of the universe, or even what a tree or stone is in its depth?

They called me a 'rapist' and a 'recluse.' I'm not a recluse.

My Swaraj is to keep intact the genius of our civilization.

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother

You're not perfect, but you're not your mistakes.

Love me or hate me, it's one or the other. Always has been. Hate my game, my swagger. Hate my fadeaway, my hunger. Hate that I'm a veteran. A champion. Hate that. Hate it with all your heart. And hate that I'm loved, for the exact same reasons.