Quotes about Identity
This is still one of the black man's big troubles today. So many of those so-called "upper class" Negroes are so busy trying to impress on the white man that they are "different from those others" that they can't see they are only helping the white man to keep his low opinion of all Negroes.
— Malcolm X
My black brothers and sisters—no one will know who we are…until we know who we are! We never will be able to go anywhere until we know where we are!
— Malcolm X
Standing there by that Harvard window, I silently vowed to Allah that I never would forget that any wings I wore had been put on by the religion of Islam. That fact I never have forgotten . . . not for one second
— Malcolm X
If you're afraid of black nationalism, you're afraid of revolution. And if you love revolution, you love black nationalism.
— Malcolm X
We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, my brothers and sisters—Plymouth Rock landed on us!
— Malcolm X
I have learned to hate every drop of white rapist blood that is in me
— Malcolm X
Indeed, how can white society atone for enslaving, for raping, for unmanning, for otherwise brutalizing millions of human beings, for centuries? What atonement would the God of Justice demand for the robbery of the black people's labor, their lives, their true identities, their culture, their history--and even their human dignity?
— Malcolm X
They called me 'the angriest Negro in America.' I wouldn't deny that charge. I spoke exactly as I felt. 'I believe in anger. The Bible says there is a time for anger.
— Malcolm X
Be content to seem what you really are.
— Marcus Aurelius
The most noble thing is to be yourself.
— Marcus Aurelius
Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants.
— Margaret Atwood
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
— Margaret Atwood