INDIVIDUALITY

Related Subjects: Eccentricity, Originality, Personality

1. If I thought mottoes and slogans did any good I would replace the "God bless our happy home" of a generation or two ago, and the "Say it quick" of our offices today, with old Emerson's "Be Yourself." That is what every artist, every civilized man and woman has got to be, as the very foundation of an art of living. It is indeed only the foundation, but it is essential.—JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS, Our Business Civilization
   

2. If we unlock the rooms of the far past we can peer in and see ourselves, busily occupied in beginning to become you and me.—J. M. BARRIE
   

3. There has never been a time or place where the individual was free to follow his own whims. He had to accept certain limitations set by the society in which he lived.—FRANZ BOAS, I Believe
   

4. Individuals will always be the center and the consummation of experience, but what the individual actually is in his life experience depends upon the nature and movement of associated life.—JOHN DEWEY, I Believe
   

5. In the light of the rise of totalitarian states, I am led to emphasize the idea that only the voluntary initiative and voluntary cooperation of individuals can produce social institutions that will protect the liberties necessary for achieving development of genuine individuality.—JOHN DEWEY, I Believe
   

6. The individual is always mistaken.—EMERSON, Essays
   

7. The dictator-hero can grind down his citizens till they are all alike, but he can't melt them into a single man. That is beyond his power.—E. M. FORSTER, I Believe
   

8. What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself—and thus make yourself indispensable.—ANDRE GIDE, Les Nourritures Terrestres
   

9. Rugged individualism.—HERBERT HOOVER, The New Day

10. An individual may believe that he should devote himself entirely to a cause, even sacrifice himself to it—his country, truth, art, love. It is in the devotion or the sacrifice that he becomes most himself, it is because of the devotion or sacrifice of individuals that causes become of value.—JULIAN HUXLEY, I Believe
    

11. The man whom God wills to slay in the struggle of life He first individualizes.—IBSEN, Brand
    

12. Individualism, is in theory a kind of Anarchy without Socialism. It is, therefore, no better than a lie, because, liberty is not possible without equality, and true Anarchy cannot be without Solidarity, without Socialism.—ENRICO MALATESTA, Anarchy
    

13. A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.—THOMAS MANN,
    The Magic Mountain
    

14. "Do you know what individuality is?"
    "No."
    "Consciousness of will. To be conscious that you have a will and can act."
    Yes, it is. It's a glorious saying.—KATHERINE MANSFIELD, Journals
    

15. The earth keeps some vibration going
    There in your heart, and that is you.—EDGAR LEE MASTERS, Spoon River Anthology
    

16. A people, it appears, may be progressive for a certain length of time, and then stop. When does it stop? When it ceases to possess individuality.—J. S. MILL, On Liberty
    

17. Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called. J. S. MILL, On Liberty
    

18. How glorious it is—and also how painful—to be an exception.—ALFRED DE MUSSET, The White Blackbird
    

19. Have you ever considered that if every thumb print is different, perhaps everything else is different? No two people are alike. Yet originals, individualists, bright intellects, and the gang who lead the laughter and point the way, are alarmed by an idea that we are becoming standardized.—FELIX RIESENBERG, Endless River
    

20. No, I am that I am, and they that level
    At my abuses reckon up their own.—SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet CXXI
    

21. The worst cliques are those which consist of one man.—BERNARD SHAW, Back to Methuselah
    

22. I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals . . . Principally I hate and detest that animal called man.—SWIFT
    

23. One's self is, first of all, the sum of one's inheritance, not only one's biological but of one's social inheritance. It is the complex of all that one believes, and all that one longs for, of what one knows, and of what one hopes, some day, somehow, to find out, if only people will let you go on trying to find out.—DOROTHY THOMPSON, Let the Record Speak
    

24. The individual is the end of the Universe.—UNAMUNO, Tragic Sense of Life

25. Individuality is the salt of common life. You may have to live in a crowd, but you do not have to live like it, nor subsist on its food.—HENRY VAN DYKE, The School of Life
    

26. The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual—namely to You.—WALT WHITMAN, By Blue Ontario's Shore
    

27. I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully arm'd.—WALT WHITMAN, So Long!
    

28. I wear my hat as I please indoors or out. Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious? Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel'd with doctors and calculated close, I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.—WALT WHITMAN, Song of Myself
    

29. I know I am solid and sound,
    To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
    All are written to me.—WALT WHITMAN, Song of Myself