Barack Obama Quotes

I've never, ever labeled myself.

You cannot really be too concerned with what people think of you. You're on your own adventure of growth and discovery. So it's not always good to be who people think you are, especially if you subscribe to it as well ... which is easily done, because then you don't have to figure out who you are, you just ask somebody else.

Identity has several parts, and the self needs to expand. Black youth should be encouraged to have as many parts or as rich an identity as possible. It's a form of allowing them to be curious about the world.

My personality doesn't interest me.

You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.

I don't think I gain anything by seeing myself.

I don't believe complete assimilation is possible, at least not for anyone who has an active, open mind. Every step, every entry into the flows of existence can be seen as a beginning, a commencement of a brand new way of seeing oneself in the world. This is the case for everyone.

The world can't tell you who you are. You've just got to figure out who you are and be there, for better or worse.

Whatever your ethnicity is, in this life you are going to be on a journey to discover who you are and how you feel about yourself.

Then, at some point, you get identified with certain things.

Make a choice: continue living your life feeling muddled in this abyss of self-misunderstanding, or you find your identity independent of it. You push for colour-blind casting; you draw your own box. You introduce yourself as who you are, not what colour your parents happen to be.

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 don't even know who I am. All I know is that I am the sibling, daughter, sister, the friend of somebody, and I need to know who I am outside of that.

I know what my identity is.

When we're growing up and being teenagers, oftentimes you try so hard to define yourself. You try to create an image of yourself because you don't really know who you are yet. And that can be kind of limiting because you forget that there are actually so many different sides of identity. And it's important to recognize that everyone is completely different.

Identity is such a crucial affair that one shouldn't rush into it.

This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.

I rejected the word humorist for a long time because I thought that it meant you had, like, a cardigan sweater with patches on the elbows, but now I'm old and I do. I grew into that word. I think at heart, all this time, I've been a diarist. I'm not ashamed of it.

When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique.

I think people who struggle to define themselves might never be satisfied because there is no definition. Living with responsibility is important, but I don't really think you have to grow up.

The first step that leads to our identity in life is usually not 'I know who I am,' but rather 'I know who I am not.'

Maybe I’m a human, but I’m a me-and-Ma as well.

First you have to know who you are. That is the most important thing, as if you don't know who you are you will either get swallowed up or you follow some unsuitable trends and just become a nonentity.

Without being aware of it, you take many things as being your identity: your body, your race, your beliefs, your thoughts.

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.