#identity

No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women... When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women. ↗

— Bell Hooks

#america #black #existence #focus #group

I found a greater identity with my own emotions in the Armenian culture as I grew older, as well as from the beginning, although I didn't know anything about it. ↗

— Alan Hovhaness

#although #anything #armenian #beginning #culture

There were two mentalities, and both mentalities had to change. There was what I called the Afrikaner mind set of the Unionist politicians, which was holding all power in their own hands, and discriminating, and their objective was to protect their identity. ↗

— John Hume

#called #change #discriminating #had #hands

The other aspect of American identity worth focusing on is the concept of America as a nation of immigrants. That certainly is a partial truth. But it is often assumed to be the total truth. ↗

— Samuel P. Huntington

#american #aspect #assumed #certainly #concept

As an actor, you're always playing different people, so you yourself are always kind of going through an identity crisis. ↗

— Josh Hutcherson

#always #crisis #different #different people #going

You have your identity when you find out, not what you can keep your mind on, but what you can't keep your mind off. ↗

— A. R. Ammons

#identity #keep #mind #off #out

Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. 'I am that I am' sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words 'Be still'. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. Give up the notion that 'I am so and so'. All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that? ↗

— Ramana Maharshi

#meditation #self #stillness #self-realization

For years, I declined to fill in the form for my Senate press credential that asked me to state my 'race,' unless I was permitted to put 'human.' The form had to be completed under penalty of perjury, so I could not in conscience put 'white,' which is not even a color let alone a 'race,' and I sternly declined to put 'Caucasian,' which is an exploded term from a discredited ethnology. Surely the essential and unarguable core of King's campaign was the insistence that pigmentation was a false measure: a false measure of mankind (yes, mankind) and an inheritance from a time of great ignorance and stupidity and cruelty, when one drop of blood could make you 'black. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#civil-rights-movement #ethnology #identity-politics #martin-luther-king-jr #perjury

Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos, we see despite all the chaos. ↗

— Madeleine L'Engle

#chaos #cosmos #identity #personality #stories

For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself. From within, I couldn't decide what to do. Unable to see, I heard my name being called. Then I walked outside. ↗

— Rumi

#inner-life #inner-self #other #life