Establishing Identity Quotes

Opposition is not there to stop you, it’s there to establish you.

All teenagers want to rebel a little and break away. But I think you are always going to want to go back to your parents for that safety they provide.

A man, in order to establish himself in the world, does everything he can to appear established there.

It's difficult to always have to be contextualized within the careers of your parents, and it's difficult not to feel like you can stand alone, but hopefully I'll earn the ability to stand alone over time.

I don't want to build on someone else's legacy. I wanted to establish my own thing.

When you come into a pre-existing situation, you gotta have your own thing going. You gotta be really strong about it, and you gotta look at the older material in an aggressive way - 'I'm gonna make this mine somehow.' You need to put your imprint on the situation that you're in.

When I first started to sing, people automatically asked what Barbi Benton was doing behind a microphone, and I'm determined to show them there is talent here.

No matter how good you are, at some point your kids are gonna have to create their own independence and think that Mom and Dad aren't cool, just to establish themselves. That's what adolescence is about. They're gonna go through that no matter what.

In all the years with WWE, I never really got to really establish the branding of The Showstopper as well as I would have liked to.

I think, a lot of times, people don't want to do what their parents do because they want to be their own person.

So there was something of a learning curve with doing your own thing and people seeing you outside of the band. I mean, people have never really heard my voice before - or heard a whole record of mine before. So it was a completely new experience.

Pulling away from your parents, that's the natural thing to do; that's how life progresses.

In the early part of your career you are always compared with somebody until you can stand on your own two feet.

These first few years, it's more trying to figure it out. What's going on in the NBA? Where do I fit in? Then my second year, I'm a player. 'Can he actually start?' I played pretty well my second year. My third year, now I gotta solidify myself. Now I'm here, and it's about winning for me.

I have faced a lot of people who said that I would always be in my father's shadow. I just take that, and I use that as a boost because, as much as I love my father, I am trying to make a name for myself.

Until you make a name for yourself, they're like, 'Be a little more Denzel,' 'Be a little more Wesley Snipes.'

It might be easy to identify me as so-and-so's son, especially to begin with, but you only get that one first film, after which you have to prove yourself and keep improving.

When you start out somewhere, you've got to get your feet wet. You got to find your place.

You know the first objective is to get out of your hometown, second objective, get it together in the capital. The awful thing about left the school, is that you'd feel you'd be important. It would matter what you did.

I think it's always natural for children to rebel against their parents and establish their own identity. And also, I think parents get invested in, you know, doing the right thing? And so their anxiety about being good parents might, in a way, affect a relationship negatively.

I'm glad to have shown myself able to do other things rather than people thinking, 'Oh, he'll just do the same as his dad.' Dad was a brilliant actor, but it just so happened he was five foot five and a half, fat and bald.

For the outside world, it may seem easy to enter into the industry if you belong to a film family, but, trust me, it's even harder, as you have to not only prove your talent but also carve your own niche and identity.

I made a little name for myself in Europe, but when I moved to the United States, I had to start all over again.