Identity

(201 votes)   Man may be defined as the animal that can say ''I,'' that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.

Erich Fromm
1900-1980, American Psychologist

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(115 votes)   An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger. Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

James Baldwin
1924-1987, American Author

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(93 votes)   Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.

Samuel Johnson
1709-1784, British Author

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(90 votes)   The real meditation is... the meditation on one's identity. Ah, voila une chose!! You try it. You try finding out why you're you and not somebody else. And who in the blazes are you anyhow? Ah, voila une chose!

Ezra Pound
1885-1972, American Poet, Critic

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(78 votes)   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.

Judith Rossner
1935-, American Author

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(69 votes)   I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

Georg C. Lichtenberg
1742-1799, German Physicist, Satirist

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(66 votes)   I know you are, but what am I? [As Pee-Wee Herman]

Paul Reubens
1952-, American Actor, Comedian, Writer

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(65 votes)   I'm not Jack Nicholson. I'm not Brando. But I do mumble.

Benicio Del Toro
1967-, Puerto Rico, Actor, Director, Writer

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(65 votes)   The Beatles exist apart from my Self. I am not really Beatle George. Beatle George is like a suit or shirt that I once wore on occasion and until the end of my life people may see that shirt and mistake it for me.

George Harrison
1943-, British-born American Musician, Guitarist, Singer, Actor, Film and record

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