Franklin Knight Lane Quotes

I think in some ways we have allowed other people to set the agenda. Other people to define who we are.

You can't ever put your self-definition in the hands of somebody who meets you for 15 minutes.

We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people's definition of you.

You think you know who you are, and then other people have these other ideas.

Some people want to define themselves, and they should, as it's part of their identity. For me personally, I've never really had a label for myself.

I know what my identity is.

Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.

Most people, in my opinion, steal much of what they are. If they didn't what poor items they would be.

Your whole idea about yourself is borrowed-- borrowed from those who have no idea of who they are themselves.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

I find it a huge strain to be responsible for my tastes and be known and defined by them.

Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.

He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the world had never allowed him to think of himself in this way.

It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

I guess there are a lot of people out there that think they're supposed to define themselves in isolation, but that's not necessarily the case.

We have so many ideas and beliefs about ourselves. We told ourselves story about what we want and who we are, smart or kind. Often these are the unexamined and limited ideas of others that we have internalized and then gone on to life out.

The way you see me is the way I am.

Identity is this incredible invisible force that controls your whole life. It's invisible, like gravity is invisible, but it controls your whole life.

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

In a way, you kind of get caught up in whatever image of yourself you think is out there.

The biographer who writes the life of his subject's self-concept passes through a fade into the inner house of life.

To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.

I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyone's perception of me.

People define themselves aesthetically at a very young age.

I think it's somebody else's job to decide what my image is.