. . . money . . . is really the difference between men and animals, most of the things men feel, animals feel, and vice versa, but animals do not know about money.
Gertrude SteinRead
The minute you or anybody else knows what you are you are not it, you are what you or anybody else knows you are and as everything in living is made up of finding out what you are it is extraordinarily difficult really not to know what you are and yet to be that thing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote explores the complexity of self-identity and how perceptions shape our understanding of ourselves.
Gertrude Stein's quote reflects on the intricate nature of self-identity, suggesting that once a person is defined by their own or others' perceptions, they lose the essence of their true self. The paradox lies in the struggle to exist authentically while being constantly understood through external labels and judgments, making self-discovery a challenging journey.
Themes
IdentitySelf-DiscoveryPerceptionAuthenticityExistentialism
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on identity at a college seminar.
More from Gertrude Stein
All quotes →The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.
Gertrude SteinRead
If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.
Gertrude SteinRead
The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.
Gertrude SteinRead
I simply contend that the middle-class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable, honest and content, that they avoid excitements and cultivate serenity is the ideal that appeals to me, it is in short the ideal of affectionate family life, of honorable business methods.
Gertrude SteinRead
It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death.
Gertrude SteinRead
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