Explore a collection of the most beloved and motivational quotes and sayings about Identity. Share these powerful messages with your loved ones on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or on your personal blog, and inspire the world with their wisdom. We've compiled the Top 100 Identity Quotes and Sayings from 96 influential authors, including Maurice Merleau Ponty,Rem Koolhaas,Simon Tam,James Baldwin,Judith Perelman Rossner, for you to enjoy and share.

There is not identity, nor non-identity, or non-coincidence, there is inside and outside turning about one another. By Maurice Merleau Ponty Identity Nonidentity Noncoincidence Inside Turning

The stronger the identity, the more it imprisons, the more it resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction. By Rem Koolhaas Interpretation Renewal Contradiction Identity Imprisons

The act of claiming an identity can be transformational. It can provide healing and empowerment. It can weld solidarity within a community. And, perhaps most importantly, it can diminish power from an oppressor, a dominant group. By Simon Tam Transformational Act Claiming Identity Empowerment

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience. By James Baldwin Experience Identity Arrived Person Faces

Identity is a bag and a gag. Yet it exists for me with all the force of a fatal disease. Obviously I am here, a mind and a body. To say there's no proof my body exists would be arty and specious and if my mind is more ephemeral, less provable, the solution of being a writer with solid (touchable, tearable, burnable) books is as close as anyone has come to a perfect answer. By Judith Perelman Rossner Identity Gag Bag Exists Mind

There is nothing more opposed to equality than identity. By Alice Von Hildebrand Identity Opposed Equality

All your life has been a journey to find an identity. By Larry Kramer Identity Life Journey Find

[A]n important new book ... Professor Akerlof and Rachel Kranton have invented Identity Economics. By Daniel Finkelstein Book Economics Important Akerlof Rachel

We are each authors of a self-concocted depiction establishing our present day identity. Our persona is woven from a range of truths interweaved with inspired imagination and occasionally bounded by convenient falsehoods. Creating our personal story generates an identity myth that allows us to carry on. By Kilroy J. Oldster Authors Selfconcocted Depiction Establishing Present

Dreaming and loving and screwing. None of these are identities. Maybe when other people look at us, but not to ourselves. We are so much more complicated than that. By David Levithan Dreaming Screwing Loving Identities People

on the meanings of the behaviors rather than the behaviors themselves. Chapter 2 reviews the historical roots of identity theory, not only in symbolic interaction, but also, just as crucially, in the cybernetics By Anonymous Behaviors Meanings Chapter Reviews Theory

Human identity is the most fragile thing that we have, and it's often only found in moments of truth. By Alan Rudolph Human Truth Identity Fragile Thing

As I was sifting through a heap of old and new "identity cards," I noticed that something was missing: my identity. By Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky Cards Missing Identity Sifting Heap

When it comes to identity we are all constructs. Who we think we are is the result of our upbringing, memories, skill set, knowledge, experiences and personal belief system. Of all the onion layers that make us who we are, our belief system is what powers our core. It's what creates the essence of a human being and makes it possible for each of us to exceed our limits, confound expectations and do the impossible. By David Amerland Constructs Identity Belief System Memories

Frankly, I believe that identity is what's inside us. By Theo Coster Frankly Identity Inside

Identity does not grow out of action until it has taken root in belonging. By Charles Martin Identity Belonging Grow Action Root

Personal Identity depends on Consciousness not on Substance By John Locke Substance Identity Consciousness Personal Depends

If serious reading dwindles to near nothingness, it will probably mean that the thing we're talking about when we use the word "identity" has reached an end. By Don Delillo Identity Nothingness Word End Reading

You create identity, you're not given identity per se. What became more and more interesting to me wasn't the I, it was text because it's text that create identity. That's how I got interested in plagiarism. By Kathy Acker Identity Create Text Plagiarism Interesting

Identity is gradual, cumulative; because there is no need for it to manifest itself, it shows itself intermittently, the way a star hints at the pulse of its being by means of its flickering light. But at what moment in this oscillation is our true self manifested? In the darkness or the twinkle? By Sergio Chejfec Cumulative Identity Gradual Intermittently Light

To have an identity, you have to believe that other identities equally exist. You need closeness with other people. And how is closeness built? By sharing secrets. By Jonathan Franzen Identity Exist Identities Equally Closeness

In fact, to me it's liberating to not think of identity as some organic property that we have to find and stick to, but actually something that is constructed, or that's imposed, that we can then counter by taking a different route and re-dressing it, and then re-dressing it again, and then re-dressing it again. By Todd Haynes Redressing Fact Constructed Imposed Liberating

Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused. By James Mcgreevey Life Identity Grappled Confused Child

The first step that leads to our identity in life is usually not 'I know who I am,' but rather 'I know who I am not.' By Matthew Mcconaughey Step Leads Identity Life

Oh, for the time when I shall sleep Without identity. By Emily Bronte Identity Time Sleep

The word "identification" is derived from the Latin word idem, meaning "same" and facere, which means "to make." So when I identify with something, I "make it the same." The same as what? The same as I. I endow it with a sense of self, and so it becomes part of my "identity. By Eckhart Tolle Latin Word Identification Meaning Idem

My newspaper job ... is my identity. By Roger Ebert Job Identity Newspaper

Identity and self-belief: a courage that swells from within, borne of waters drunk deeply. By Fennel Hudson Identity Selfbelief Borne Deeply Courage

According to Viktor Frankl, a person finds identity only to the extent that "he commits himself to something beyond himself, to a cause greater than himself."4 The meaning of our lives emerges in the surrender of ourselves to an adventure of becoming who we are not yet. By Brennan Manning Frankl Viktor Himself Person Finds

Your identity is like your shadow: not always visible and yet always present. By Fausto Cercignani Shadow Present Identity Visible

The only pertinent political question in relation to an identity [or its photograph] is not Is it really coherent? but What does it actually achieve? By Victor Burgin Identity Photograph Coherent Pertinent Political

Having an identity is one thing. Being born into an identity is quite a different matter. By Henry Rollins Identity Thing Matter Born

At some point, when I finished school in Zurich, I suddenly realised that I was nobody. I couldn't find a shape. Everything I was had been invented. Initially, I took it to be a fundamental conflict. But today I find pleasure in accepting that this thing called 'identity' is the true invention. There's no way that it really exists. By Sophie Hunger Zurich Point Finished School Suddenly

I didn't have an identity. It was manufactured. My identity now? It was written on the wall by ancient forces. By Robert Downey Jr. Identity Manufactured Forces Written Wall

We've all got an identity. You can't avoid it. It's what's left when you take everything else away. By Diane Arbus Identity Avoid Left

It is passing strange, what a fluid thing is one's own identity. By Jacqueline Carey Strange Identity Passing Fluid Thing

You seek identity in the midst of indistinguishab le chaos, in sprawling nameless reality. By Jack Kerouac Chaos Reality Seek Identity Midst

Where id is, there shall ego be By Sigmund Freud Ego

The great artist Michelangelo claimed that his sculptures were already present in the stone, and all he had to do was carve away everything else. Our understanding of identity is often similar: Beneath the many layers of shoulds and shouldn'ts that cover us, there lies a constant, single, true self that is just waiting to be discovered. By Sheena Iyengar Michelangelo Stone Great Artist Claimed

The seed you sow today will not produce crop till tomorrow. For this reason, your identity does not lie in your current results. This is not who you are. your current results are who you were. By James Arthur Ray Tomorrow Current Seed Sow Today

Where id was, there ego shall be. By Sigmund Freud Ego

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. By Gertrude Stein Funny Identity Remember

My hair is my identity. By Ethan Zohn Identity Hair

Identity has been such an explosive territory for me ... so hard, so painful at times. By Jhumpa Lahiri Identity Explosive Territory Hard Times

One who knows does not say it; one who says does not know it. Block the openings, Shut the doors, Soften the glare, Follow along old wheel tracks; Blunt the point, Untangle the knots. This is known as dark identity. Thus you cannot get close to it, nor can you keep it at arms length; you cannot bestow benefit on it, nor can you do it harm; you cannot ennoble it, nor can you debase it. Hence it is the most valued. By Lao-Tzu Shut Soften Follow Blunt Untangle

One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse. The horse provides the locomotor energy, and the rider has the prerogative of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of his powerful mount towards it. But all too often in the relations between the ego and the id we find a picture of the less ideal situation in which the rider is obliged to guide his horse in the direction in which it itself wants to go. By Sigmund Freud Rider Horse Ego Compare Relation

Identity is an assemblage of constellations. By Anna Deavere Smith Identity Constellations Assemblage

Identity: smack-dab in the middle ... Neither omnipotent nor impotent. Neither God's MVP nor God's mistake. By Max Lucado Identity Smackdab Middle God Mvp

Our identity is not in our joy, and our identity is not in our suffering. Our identity is in Christ, whether we have joy or are suffering. By Mark Driscoll Identity Suffering Joy Christ

Our identity includes our natural world, how we move through it, how we interact with it and how it sustains us. By David Suzuki World Identity Includes Natural Move

The Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit has suggested that the important thing is not a person's identity but his or her identifications. Tablet: A New Read on Jewish Life By David Kaufmann Israeli Avishai Margalit Identifications Tablet

impulses and instincts, id is immutable and everlasting. By Steven Ray Ozanich Impulses Instincts Everlasting Immutable

I'm interested in how identity is transient. How do we know who we really are, when different situations and environments dictate how we behave? I'm interested in the role we all play. We spend our whole lives becoming ourselves when we are born as no one else. By Marina And The Diamonds Interested Transient Identity Behave Situations

I came to believe that my true identity goes beyond the outer roles I play. It transcends the ego. I came to understand that there is an Authentic 'I' within - an 'I Am,' or divine spark within the soul. By Sue Monk Kidd Play True Identity Outer Roles

Our sense of identity is in large measure conferred on us by others in the ways they treat or mistreat us, recognize or ignore us, praise us or punish us. Some people make us timid and shy; others elicit our sex appeal and dominance. In some groups we are made leaders, while in others we are reduced to being followers. We come to live up to or down to the expectations others have of us. By Philip Zimbardo Recognize Praise Sense Identity Large

I have struggled with identity all my life. It's not like something that just happened last week. By Caitlyn Jenner Life Struggled Identity Week Happened

And so, what of it all? What of me and my passions and personas, my great loves and failures of love, my writing, my politics? What of the clanging opinions, the endless queries as to the whys and wherefores of how I chose to conduct myself? In the end, there is but one answer to every question, whether it is spit at me or made as gentlest inquiry: I was I. By Elizabeth Berg Personas Writing Politics Loves Love

The loss of illusions and the discovery of identity, though painful at first, can be ultimately exhilarating and strengthening. By Abraham Maslow Identity Strengthening Loss Illusions Discovery

Your true identity is as a child of God. This is the identity you have to accept. Once you have claimed it and settled in it, you can live in a world that gives you much joy as well as pain. You can receive the praise as well as the blame that comes to you as an opportunity for strengthening your basic identity, because the identity that makes you free is anchored beyond all human praise and blame. You belong to God, and it is as a child of God that you are sent into the world. By Henri J.m. Nouwen Identity God Child True World

Identity changes by the second, you turn into someone else every time a new thought rewires your brain. You're already a different person than you were ten minutes ago. By Peter Watts Identity Brain Turn Time Thought

Time is the enemy of identity By Michael Moorcock Time Identity Enemy

The identity of an individual is essentially a function of her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute By Amartya Sen Choices Attribute Identity Individual Essentially

You are more that the identity your mind creates. By Steven Redhead Creates Identity Mind

My true identity goes beyond the outer roles I play . . there is an authentic 'I' within . . . a divine spark within the soul. By Sue Monk Kidd Play True Identity Outer Roles

We may taste of every turn of chance - now rule as Kings, now serve as Slaves; now love, now hate; now prosper, and now perish. But still, through all, we are the same; for this is the marvel of Identity. By H. Rider Haggard Kings Slaves Chance Love Hate

anonymous mystery By Deborah Gregory Anonymous Mystery

In this world one must have a name; it prevents confusion, even when it does not establish identity. Some, though, are known by numbers, which also seem inadequate distinctions. By Ambrose Bierce Confusion Identity World Prevents Establish

Who you are; that is, who you choose to be - your identity, works in your life like an invisible hand. By Bryant Mcgill Identity Works Hand Choose Life

Sometimes it seems my identity's a matter of opinion By Shannon Hale Opinion Identity Matter

And I sit here without identity: faceless. My head aches. By Sylvia Plath Faceless Identity Sit Aches Head

Each human needs to find his or her timeless and formless essence identity By Eckhart Tolle Identity Human Find Timeless Formless

In all cultures, the family imprints its members with selfhood. Human experience of identity has two elements; a sense of belonging and a sense of being separate. The laboratory in which these ingredients are mixed and dispensed is the family, the matrix of identity. By Salvador Minuchin Cultures Selfhood Sense Family Imprints

Identity is invariably false to facts. By Alfred Korzybski Identity Facts Invariably False

In everyone there is some willingness to merge with the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudo-life. This is much more than a simple conflict between two identities. It is something far worse: it is a challenge to the very notion of identity itself. By Vaclav Havel Pseudolife Willingness Merge Anonymous Crowd

In Tar Baby, the classic concept of the individual with a solid, coherent identity is eschewed for a model of identity which sees the individual as a kaleidoscope of heterogeneous impulses and desires, constructed from multiple forms of interaction with the world as a play of difference that cannot be completely comprehended. By Toni Morrison Baby Individual Identity Tar Solid

Just as our fingerprints are one-of-a-kind, so is our identity. Each of us is a once-only articulation of what humans can be. We are rare, unmatched, mysterious. This is why the quality of openness is so crucial to our self-discovery. We cannot know ourselves by who we think we are, who others take us to be, or what our driver's license may say. We are fields of potential, some now actualized, most not yet. By David Richo Identity Fingerprints Unmatched Mysterious Onceonly

When you don't inherit an identity you have to define it on your own. By Marc Webb Inherit Identity Define

Our personal identities are socially situated. We are where we live, eat, work, and make love. [ ... ]Our sense of identity is in large measure conferred on us by others in the ways they treat or mistreat us, recognize or ignore us, praise us or punish us. Some people make us timid and shy; others elicit our sex appeal and dominance. In some groups we are made leaders, while in others we are reduced to being followers. We come to live up to or down to the expectations others have of us. The expectations of others often become self-fulfilling prophecies. Without realizing it, we often behave in ways that confirm the beliefs others have about us. Those subjective beliefs create new realities for us. We often become who other people think we are, in their eyes and in our behavior. By Philip G. Zimbardo Situated Personal Identities Socially Make

The search for identity in one's youth is a journey of alternate boredom and agony interrupted by flash of joy. By Victoria Clayton Joy Search Identity Youth Journey

To accept duality is to earn identity. By Joss Whedon Identity Accept Duality Earn

I can't give up my own identity. By Shirley Maclaine Identity Give

We have to recognise that the validation of identity comes through relationships we have and what we produce. By Eva Cox Produce Recognise Validation Identity Relationships

An important ethical function of identity politics, in this context, is to highlight that obstacles to the self-development of individuals, and to the formation and exercise of their agency, emerge in complex cultural and psychic forms, as well as through more familiar kinds of socio-economic inequality. By Michael Kenny Politics Context Individuals Agency Emerge

Identity in the form of continuity of personality is an extremely important characteristic of the individual. By Kenneth L. Pike Identity Individual Form Continuity Personality

But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same. Hatred has to be cultivated as a civic passion. The enemy is the friend of the people. You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery. By Umberto Eco Hatred Meaning Identity Based Passion

We all need a firm sense of identity. By Christopher Eccleston Identity Firm Sense

Although I believe identity politics '"produces limited but real empowerment for its participants," it is important to note that it contains significant problems: first, its essentialist tendency; second, its fixed _we-they_ binary position; third, its homogenization of diverse social oppression; fourth, its simplification of the complexity and paradox of being privileged and unprivileged; and fifth its ruling out of intersectional space of diverse forms of oppression in reality. By Namsoon Kang Diverse Oppression Wethey Fourth Participants

In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity. By Erik Erikson Existence Identity Social Jungle Human

Identity itself should be not a smug label or a gold medal but a revolution. By Andrew Solomon Identity Revolution Smug Label Gold

Without style, there can be no identity. By John Kinsella Style Identity

Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but rather by what one owns. By Jimmy Carter Human Identity Longer Defined

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. By Ikechukwu Joseph Selfidentity Island Content Container Carry

All of us need an identity which unites us with our neighbours, our countrymen, those people who are subject to the same rules and the same laws as us, those people with whom we might one day have to fight side by side to protect our inheritance, those people with whom we will suffer when attacked, those people whose destinies are in some way tied up with our own. By Roger Scruton People Side Neighbours Countrymen Inheritance

But in fact there are infinite subtleties to identity-that is to say, there is the way that you are, which is the sum of the way you are becoming and the way you have been, which does not take into account the way you secretly wish to be. By Hilary Thayer Hamann Fact Infinite Subtleties Identitythat Sum

Identity is not found, the way Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes. Identity is built. By Margaret Halsey Identity Pharaoh Moses Bulrushes Found

Self-identity is inextricably bound up with the identity of the surroundings. By Lars Fr. H. Svendsen Selfidentity Surroundings Inextricably Bound Identity

I suppose identity depends on memory. And if my memory is blotted out, then I wonder if I exist - I mean, if I am the same person. Of course, I don't have to solve that problem. It's up to God, if any. By Jorge Luis Borges Memory Suppose Identity Depends God

You will not find your identity in what you have, but in who has you. You will not find your identity in what you do, but in what has been done for you. And you will not find your identity in what you desire, but in who has desired - at infinite cost to Himself - a relationship with you. Christ is your life. He gives you a new identity and will work that new identity out in your life until the day when He appears. On that day you will finally see clearly, as Christ sees you now. You will know as you are known. And you will understand that the truest thing about you - that in Christ God called you His beloved in whom He is well pleased - has been true all along. And is now true forever. Believe. Trust. Base your entire identity and worth on that fact. By David Lomas Identity Find Christ Life Day

If a group of people feels that it has been humiliated and that its honour has been trampled underfoot, it will want to express its identity and this expression of an identity will take different shapes and forms. By Abdolkarim Soroush Identity Underfoot Forms Group People

The I is the soul, which endures. By Nachman Of Breslov Soul Endures