Identity

Quotes

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We all have names we don't know about.
When a man is born... there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours.

Ulysses
A person's a person, no matter how small.
Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else.

The Woman Destroyed
The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

Status Anxiety
We know what we are, but know not what we may be
It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one's belly, in order to be able to save one's head
I believe in standardizing automobiles, not human beings
We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays