Amin Maalouf Quotes

I try not to define myself. Other people are going to do that for you anyway.

Probably every person is some mixture of wanting to feel a sense of commonality and shared experience with others but also wanting to feel completely singular and unique.

Mother used to say it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.

Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness?

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

The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has a 'meaning'and each of us is unique.

Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else.

The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.

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 am who I am, you are who you are, and everything else is a perception based on acceptance, deception, smoke, mirrors, and so on. It's what's between us that seems to justify our accidental identities.

You have to be your own person. You can't let people's opinions determine how you think about yourself. There's a difference between identity and self-identity.

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.

The beliefs that we use to define our own individuality, what makes us unique - good, bad, or indifferent - from other individuals.

My choices are like my fingerprints, they make me unique

When I say "I," I mean a thing absolutely unique, not to be confused with any other.

What I do and who I am are two different things. And they always will be.

The Self has turned out to mean so many things, to mean them so ambiguously, and to be so wavering in its application, that we do not feel encouraged.

The sense of identity provides the ability to experience one's self as something that has continuity and sameness, and to act accordingly.

The personality is defined by its inconsistencies, not its consistencies. It's what makes us unique and who we are.

As long as I am this or that, I am not all things.

Every decision you make - every decision that you make every second - is not a decision about what to do, it is a decision about who you are. Every act is an act of self-definition.

Every person born in this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique.

We're all unique, just never in the ways we imagine.

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'm fascinated by what makes up a self, how one becomes a self, how much is it an answer to others and how much is it an essence of self.