“Everything without tells the individual that he is nothing; everything within persuades him that he is everything.”
“Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.”
“In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.”
“In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.”
“Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.”
“The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.”
“My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.”
“The trouble with the sacred Individual is that he has no significance, except as he can acquire it from others, from the social whole.”
“The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.”
“Each man must have his ''I''; it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble.”
“But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal Impulses and preferences.”
“More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure.”
“Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.”
“Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do -- can love things that no one else can love. We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music. You know what to do.”
“It is said that if Noah's ark had to be built by a company; they would not have laid the keel yet; and it may be so. What is many men's business is nobody's business. The greatest things are accomplished by individual men.”
“Those who talk about individuality the most are the ones who most object to deviation, and in a few years it may be the other way around. Some day everybody will just think what they want to think, and then everybody will probably be thinking alike; that”
“It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations --past and present --are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millennia.”
“Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to the citizen as much freedom of action and of being, as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.”
“The great challenge which faces us is to assure that, in our society of big-ness, we do not strangle the voice of creativity, that the rules of the game do not come to overshadow its purpose, that the grand orchestration of society leaves ample room for the man who marches to the music of another drummer.”
“Except in a few well-publicized instances (enough to lend credence to the iconography painted on the walls of the media), the rigorous practice of rugged individualism usually leads to poverty, ostracism and disgrace. The rugged individualist is too often mistaken for the misfit, the maverick, the spoilsport, the sore thumb.”
“A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person's instrument; on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations.”
“My mother said to me, ''If you become a soldier, you'll be a general; if you become a monk you'll end up as the pope.'' Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. --Pablo Picasso Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.”
“What is wanted -- whether this is admitted or not -- is nothing less than a fundamental remolding, indeed weakening and abolition of the individual: one never tires of enumerating and indicating all that is evil and inimical, prodigal, costly, extravagant in the form individual existence has assumed hitherto, one hopes to manage more cheaply, more safely, more equitably, more uniformly if there exist only large bodies and their members.”