Steven Biko Quotes

The world will change for the better when people decide they are sick and tired of being sick and tired of the way the world is, and decide to change themselves.

Long-term sustainable change happens if people discover their own power.

Much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives.

You do need to maintain some of yourself and know who you are, but that doesn't mean you can't evolve.

Personal identity seems like it's just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' to Jay Gatsby in 'The Great Gatsby.' It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue. If you're given the freedom to be anything, or be anyone, what do you do with it?

It is always the same: once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.

So you start one person at a time. Change one person, you can change a village.

If you want to participate in life, you have to deny your identity.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

I know for myself, and maybe I'm weird or whatever, but the whole thing is about constantly redefining identity.

My first four books, from 'Fight Club' to 'Choke,' dealt with personal identity issues. The crises the narrators found themselves in were generated by themselves.

It's hard to live in a blind and aimless - or dishonest, rather - narrative when somebody in your family is going farther toward - or at least think they are and say they are - their true self.

Something really intense happened to me during the 'SNL' performance. It felt like the person I was made to be faced the person I'm becoming. It was the first time I felt like I was able to make any sense of ownership of my work.

The world around me has changed, and I have learned to adapt but not change. But I'm changing into the woman I am meant to be.

All my work is not personal - I've been trying to get away from that into the true self underneath all the tastes and things we think make up a self.

Real change comes from real individuals and real experiences.

I sort of have this feeling about change in general. We can make baby steps on a macro level. We can try to shift policy, voting and changing who's in office. But we can make huge, sweeping changes on a personal level and in your immediate circle, or just the people around you.

I am learning to see. I don't know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and doesn't stop where it once used to. I have an interior that I never knew of... What's the use of telling someone that I am changing? If I'm changing, I am no longer who I was; and if I am something else, it's obvious that I have no acquaintances. And I can't possibly write to strangers.

My sense of identity broke down and was replaced by something that is very hard to put into words. Awareness, Consciousness.

The woman's personal identity is a vast undiscovered country -- with which Society has yet to acquaint itself, and by which it is yet to be revolutionized.

People have far more power than they realize, if they would only choose to use it.

You have sole custody of your life. Who you are today is not who you have to be tomorrow. Embrace the possibility of transformation.

I have the feeling that I know who I am, only I'm not anymore.

It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realise that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality. The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth.

In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not.