A Quote by Penelope Lively

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.

Penelope Lively

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Identity Need Our Past Sense

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Penelope Lively
English - Author
Born: March 17, 1933

It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.

George Steiner

The identity of just one thing, the "clash of civilization" view that you're a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Christian, I think that's such a limited way of seeing humanity, and schools have the opportunity to bring out the fact that we have hundreds of identities. We have our national identity. We have our cultural identity, linguistic identity, religious identity. Yes, cultural identity, professional identity, all kinds of ways.

Amartya Sen

Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wide social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks

Erving Goffman

All over the world today people have a very strong desire to find a sense of identity, and at the same time that's coupled with the rise of absolutely absurd wars that relate to ethnic identity. Perhaps there is something deeply ingrained in people that relates to a sense of belonging, and without that, identity doesn't seem as real as it should.

Jaron Lanier

If you are trying to raise a child to be a Jew, then you have to create a sense of Jewish identity. You really weaken that sense of identity if you celebrate two religions.

Elliott Abrams

The needs of children during adolescence are particular and acute. They need an opportunity to develop a sense of identity and to maintain the sense of security that emanates from group acceptance.

Elliot W. Eisner

Our identity was bestowed upon us by God and when humanity rebelled against God, we were divorced from the source of our identity. In this vacuum, work can wrongfully become the source of our identity wreaking havoc on our lives and work. Work was never meant to carry the weight of our identity.

David Kim

The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts we have to be open. In order to be open we have to renounce ourselves, in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed identity.

Thomas Merton

My past identity separates from me and remains in the past; he becomes someone else. Is memory really as insubstantial as the fragments of information that we store in our heads?

Hideo Kojima

We need all three senses of time - a sense of the future, a sense of the present, and a sense of the past - at all times to understand or experience what's happening right now. It's constantly unfolding that way.

Fred Alan Wolf

We all need a firm sense of identity.

Christopher Eccleston

Having an identity that is specifically linked to your age or how you look would definitely set you up for pain because these things will change. If we have a broader sense of who we are, our identity never becomes threatened.

Tony Robbins

If a man has a sense of identity that does not depend on being shored up by someone else, it cannot be eroded by someone else. If a woman has a sense of identity that does not depend on finding that identity in someone else, she cannot lose her identity in someone else. And so we return to the central fact: it is necessary to be.

Jo Coudert

The past which is not recoverable in any other way is embedded, as if in amber, in the music, and people can regain a sense of identity.

Oliver Sacks

An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.

Haile Selassie

What is it that unites, on the left of British politics, George Orwell, Billy Bragg, Gordon Brown and myself? An understanding that identity and a sense of belonging need to be linked to our commitment to nationhood and a modern form of patriotism.

David Blunkett

A Quote by Penelope Lively

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