80 Identity Quotes to Help You Connect with Your Unique Self

Your identity is unlike anyone else.

These identity quotes will help you blossom into who you are.

Getting caught up trying to go along with the crowd is easy.

As people, we want to fit in with the crowd and be part of a group.

But when we focus too much on this, we can lose all the things that make us unique.

Learning how to explore your identity and then grow in it can lead to living a much happier life.

While others may try to get you to conform, these identity quotes can help keep you on the path of living your best life and being an example for others to do the same.

Don’t forget to also check out these authenticity quotes about being your authentic self.

Check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily inspiration. 

Check out our inspirational quotes category page for more inspirational life quotes.

Identity quotes on being yourself

1. “The reward for conformity is that everybody likes you except yourself.” – Rita Mae Brown

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2. “Every man is the architect of his own fortune.” – Appius

3. “We know what we are, but not what we may be.” – William Shakespeare   

4. “It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.” – Andre Guide

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5. “Perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.” – Orson Scott Card

6. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw

7. “Don’t let your struggle become your identity. Overcome it fast.” – Ralston Bowles

8. “Own your identity. Love who you are in the world. Love your deafness.” – Nyle DiMarco

9. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

10. “You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.” – David Goggins

If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to read our collection of David Goggins quotes to help you overcome any situation.

Identity quotes on knowing who you are

11. “If you really have your own identity you’ll keep on doing what you think is really right for you, and you’ll also understand the next step you want to take.” – Helmut Lang

12. “Folks can change their ways much as they want to. But I don’t care how many times you change your ways, what’s in you is in you, and it’s got to come out.” – James Baldwin

13. “Discovering my own identity doesn’t mean that I work it out in isolation but that I negotiate it through dialogue, partly overt, partly internal, with others.” – Charles Taylor

14. “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss

15. “Identity was partly heritage, partly upbringing, but mostly the choices you make in life.” – Bran” Patricia Briggs

16. “The only true happiness lies in knowing who you are … and making peace with it.” – Laurell K. Hamilton

17. “Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.” – George RR Martin

18. “In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.” – Erik Erikson

19. “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to read our collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes on living a great life.

20. “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” – Oscar Wilde

If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to check out our collection of Oscar Wilde quotes from the iconic author.

 21. “It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” – Patrick Rothfuss

22. “Memories are the architecture of our identity.” – Brian Solis

23. “When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” – Ralph Ellison

Unique identity quotes

24. “We don’t need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in the different things. You want the vegetables – the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers – to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences.” – Jane Elliot

25. “We all need a past – that’s where our sense of identity comes from.” – Penelope Lively

26. “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life, but define yourself.” – Harvey Fierstein

27. “I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.” – James Baldwin

28. “My Culture is my identity and personality. It gives me spiritual, intellectual and emotional distinction from others, and I am proud of it.” –M.F. Moonzajer

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29. “I was born alone, I’m gonna die alone. I have my own identity. I’m my own person, and no two people are the same.” – ASAP Ferg

30. “Identity cannot be found or fabricated but emerges from within when one has the courage to let go.” – Doug Cooper

31. “It’s what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.” – Don Delillo

32. “I think every person has their own identity and beauty. Everyone being different is what is really beautiful. If we were all the same, it would be boring.” – Tila Tequila

33. “One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas — and you have to work through it all.” – V.S. Naipaul

Seeing past your own identity quotes

34. “To be a good citizen, it’s important to be able to put yourself in other people’s shoes and see the big picture. If everything you see is rooted in your own identity, that becomes difficult or impossible.” – Eli Pariser

35. “Struggling is not the identity. You must learn to live while you struggle, such that anyone who sees you can separate the struggle from your life.” Unknown

36. “I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me — they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could.” – Veronica Roth

37. “Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.” – William James

38. “Our true identity is to love without fear and insecurity. Our higher potential finds us when we set our course in that direction. The power of love and compassion transforms insecurity.” – Doc Childre
If you’re enjoying these quotes, you’ll love our collection of insecurity quotes to help you gain confidence.

39. “The identity of one changes with how one perceives reality.” – Vithu Jeyaloganathan

40. “Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.” – Chuck Palahniuk

 41. “Our identity has already been chosen for us’ but it is up to us to accept it, or fight and change it.” – Afnan Ahmad Mia

Insightful identity quotes

42. “Sketching is almost everything. It is the painter’s identity, his style, his conviction, and then color is just a gift to the drawing.” – Fernando Botero

43. “Identity is this incredible invisible force that controls your whole life. It’s invisible like gravity is invisible, but it controls your whole life.” – Tony Robbins

44. “When you go through hell, your own personal hell, and you have lost – loss of fame, loss of money, loss of career, loss of family, loss of love, loss of your own identity that I have experienced in my own life – and you’ve been able to face the demons that have haunted you… I appreciate everything that I have.” – David Cassidy

45. “People fear their hidden selves, afraid that they will burst out.” – Gregory Benford

46. “I don’t need to worry about identity theft because no one wants to be me.” – Jay London

47. “Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man’s life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self.” – B.R. Ambedkar

48. “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” – Charlotte Bronte

49. “A wife should no more take her husband’s name than he should hers. My name is my identity, and must not be lost.” – Lucy Stone

50. “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” – Mahatma Gandhi

51. A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.” – Coco Chanel

More identity quotes and sayings

52. “You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.” – Chuck Palahniuk

53. He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” – Gabriel García Márquez

54. “We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.” – Pascal Mercier

55. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” – Steve Jobs

56. “I seem to have run in a great circle and met myself again on the starting line.” – Jeanette Winterson

57. “Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.” – George Bernard Shaw

58. “I’m not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I’ve gotten from books.” – Beatrice Sparks

59. “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.” – Brennan Manning

60. “I’ve lived too long with pain. I won’t know who I am without it.” – Orson Scott Card

Quotes about Identity from Famous Books

61. “I’ve only been half myself lately, and I thought coming here would let me work this part out of me so I could be me again.” – Shannon Hale

62. “Without dignity, identity is erased.” – Laura Hillenbrand

63. “Who wanted to reassure her? Mr. Nobley or the actual man, Actor X?” – Shannon Hale

64. “She did not look into my eyes, did not see the lion inside. She did not see the me of me, the Isabel.” – Laurie Halse Anderson

65. “We have come to realize in modern times that the ‘melting pot’ need not mean the end of particular ethnic identities or traditions.” – John F. Kennedy

66. ″‘She’s not dead. She’s a drama queen. Wants attention.‘” – John Green

67. “What we know matters but who we are matters more.” – Brené Brown

68. “It’s about becoming what I want to become. Not what some surgical committee thinks I should.” – Scott Westerfeld

69. “You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity.” – Philip K. Dick

70. “Death ain’t nothing but a fastball on the outside corner.” – August Wilson

Identity Quotes To Make You Feel Comfortable With Your Personality

71. “An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.” ― James A. Baldwin

72. “Integrity simply means not violating one’s own identity.” ― Erich Fromm

73. “Human identity is the most fragile thing that we have, and it’s often only found in moments of truth.” ― Alan Rudolph

74. “Unless we base our sense of identity upon the truth of who we are, it is impossible to attain true happiness.” ― Brenda Shoshanna

75. “Identity is such a crucial affair that one shouldn’t rush into it.” ― David Quammen

76. “My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t end there. At least that’s what I would choose to believe.” ― Barack Obama

77. “Identity in the form of continuity of personality is an extremely important characteristic of the individual.” ― Kenneth Lee Pike

78. “It’s like my identity is an orbit that I’ve strayed far away from.” ― Haruki Murakami

79. “Committing yourself is a way of finding out who you are. A man finds his identity by identifying.” ― Robert E. Terwilliger

80. “All discomfort comes from suppressing your true identity.” ― Bryant H. McGill

What did you learn from these identity quotes?

Wouldn’t the world be an incredibly boring place if all of us were the same? And yet we strive so much to fit in.

While society tries to say that it’s a struggle, mainly in the teenage years as people learn to figure out who they are, it’s a much larger problem.

From the workplace to family relationships, there can be a push for us to match the personalities and identities of those around us.

But what fun is that?

Discover who you are, then bloom into being even more of that person.

Then set out to help others do the same.

What’s your biggest takeaway from these identity quotes and sayings?

Do you have any other favorite quotes to add?

Let us know in the comment section below.