Northrop Frye Quotes

Jews have had to carry around their own sense of self in a carpet bag and I think perhaps too much emphasis might be being put on nationality and on the other hand patriotism, that sort of thing.

It's a complicated issue, but I define myself as an American, primarily.

We're a proud people. We don't want to be assimilated.

… tribes with flags

I don't like identity. We accept identities in Israel. We make them holy. But what does identity really mean?

That was the fear that there would be no identity anymore, for Canada. It was foolish, because there are so many examples of separatism, and nothing has disintegrated, unless they went to war.

Quebec does not have Opinions, but only sentiments.

I'm not really clear what the whole deal is with flags. I like my flag, but I wouldn't die for it. There's issues of identity, of course. That's going to always come in. I, for example, don't want to be called a 'North Britisher.' I want to be Scottish.

I think of myself as being Jewish and Irish, despite the fact that I'm English.

I'll always be Chinese first. It probably isn't politically correct to say or something that the majority understands; I can change my shoes, I can swap my passport, but, I'll always have this face.

Africa's not a color - it's a place.

But now all of a sudden some idiots in Taiwan start to say that they are not Chinese. Their grand parents were Chinese. But for some reason, they feel they are not Chinese.

It would be simply suicidal to French Canadians to form a party by themselves.

For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.

Few Iranians these days go through the fiction of calling themselves 'Persian.' Calling yourself Persian is a way of distancing themselves from Iran.

In many ways I'm similar to Barack Obama, who also has a strange name but was raised by a white American mother. His background is far more complicated than his name would suggest. Furthermore, the fact that I was a child during the hostage crisis has caused me to equate being Iranian with being alienated.

I'm Irish and always will be, but America has taught me so much. Maybe it's here in the U.S. that we find a healing, for in the broader melting pot we get to look at some of these self-destructive attributes that we bring to bear upon our own quarrels and begin to solve them in ways other than just splitting apart.

There are some Chicanos who don't want to be Chicanos - they want to be Mexican-American, Hispanic, or even Spanish.

There's a big difference between race and culture. Because racially, I'm an Indian man. Culturally, not at all.

Canadian, adj. and n. An anti-American American.

Nationality is a thing like a church or a secret society; it is a product of the human soul and will; it is a spiritual product.

I expected to find a contest between a government and a people: I found two nations (French and English) warring in the bosom of a single state: I found a struggle, not of principles, but of races.

Canada is not another [American] State, and we don't want to be one.

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbors.

There is room enough in this country for one great free people; but there's not room enough, under the same flag and the same laws, for two or three angry, suspicious, obstructive "nationalities.