36 Inspirational & Meaningful Identity Quotes

“We know what we are, but not what we may be.” ― William Shakespeare. 36 Inspirational Identity Quotes

Identity Quotes

1. “He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
― Gabriel García Márquez

2. “What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
― William Shakespeare

3. “I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me--they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could.”
― Veronica Roth

4. “I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books.”
― Beatrice Sparks

5. “Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
― Orson Scott Card

6. “When you meet a man who is broken, pick him up and carry him. When you meet a woman who’s broken, put her all into your arms. Cause we don’t know where we come from … we don’t know where we are. ”
― Laurie Anderson

7. “I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.”
― Charlotte Brontë

8. “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”
― Brennan Manning

9. “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë

Identity Quotes

10. “I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.”
― George MacDonald

11. “It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.”
― Betty Friedan

12. “I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.”
― Orson Scott Card

13. “We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

14. “Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.”
― Joseph Conrad

15. “You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”
― Philip K. Dick

16. “All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.”
― David Sedaris

17. “When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”
― Ralph Ellison

18. “We have to be braver than we think we can be because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

Identity Quotes

19. “I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line.”
― Jeanette Winterson

20. “Through others we become ourselves.”
― Lev S. Vygotsky

21. “I am a citizen of the world.”
― Sylvia Beach

22. “Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it....”
― George Bernard Shaw

23. “I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.”
― Jean Jacques Rousseau

24. “Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
― George R.R. Martin

25. “What we know matters but who we are matters more.”
― Brené Brown

26. “I am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.”
― Charlotte Brontë

27. “Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it's like they didn't fade away at all.”
― Bob Dylan

Identity Quotes

28. “We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.”
― Pascal Mercier

29. “I hate how I don't feel real enough unless people are watching.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

30. “A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.”
― Coco Chanel

31. “Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

32. “You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

33. “It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
― Patrick Rothfuss

34. “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

35. “We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
― William Shakespeare

36. “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself.”
― Harvey Fierstein