#dent

Finally, the president added, 'The American people are idealists, but they also want their leaders to be realistic... ↗

— Bob Woodward

#bob-woodward #idealists #leadership #obama-s-wars #president

A nation is not defined by its borders or the boundaries of its land mass Rather, a nation is defined by adverse people who have been unified by a cause and a value system and who are committed to a vision for the type of society they wish to live in and give to the future generations to come. ↗

— Fela Durotoye

#inspirational #leadership #nation #nation-building #national-identity

I suppose I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really. ↗

— Tennessee Williams

#fragile #frightened #hysteria #identification #reaching-out

Never try to do anything that is outside of who you are. A forced smile is a sign of what feels wrong in your heart, so recognize it when it happens. Living a lie will reduce you to one. ↗

— Ashly Lorenzana

#forced #honesty #identity #lies #life

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

#life #regret #life

If I wasn't so phenomenal. I would go back to you. ↗

— Coco J. Ginger

#broken-hearted-quotes #heartbreak #identity-love #life #love-quotes-and-saying

Not only is there often a right and wrong, but what goes around does come around, Karma exists, chickens do come home to roost, and as my mother, Phyllis, liked to say, “There is always a day of reckoning.” The good among the great understand that every choice we make adds to the strength or weakness of our spirits—ourselves, or to use an old fashioned word for the same idea, our souls. That is every human’s life work: to construct an identity bit by bit, to walk a path step by step, to live a life that is worthy of something higher, lighter, more fulfilling, and maybe even everlasting. ↗

— Donald Van de Mark

#ethics #fulfillment #identity #inspiration #inspirational

First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you? ↗

— Thomas Merton

#identity #self #life

He was no longer quite sure whether anything he had ever thought or felt was truly his own property, or whether his thoughts were merely a common part of the world’s store of ideas which had always existed ready-made and which people only borrowed, like books from a library. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#independent-thought #influence #originality #thoughts #life

Don’t let a day go by without asking who you are…each time you let a new ingredient to enter your awareness. ↗

— Deepak Chopra

#identity #mindfulness #spirituality #life