Individuality Quotes - Page 3

If you want to be a big success then it becomes a dick showing contest, and that's not what it's about. It can't be about 'My book sold more copies than your book.' It can't be about 'More people went to see my movie than went to see your movie.' If it is about that, then Danielle Steel must be an extraordinarily wonderful author because she sells so many copies. You can't do calculations that way.What interests me is holding the vision: doing something that is yours and making sure that it can't be like anyone else's.

Where you come from, what you look like, and what your past holds do not define you as an individual--you are what you make yourself to be.

It's good when a man deceives your expectations, when he doesn't correspond to the preconceived notion of him. To belong to a type is the end of a man, his condemnation. If he doesn't fall into any category, if he's not representative, half of what's demanded of him is there. He's free of himself, he has achieved a grain of immortality.

To exist is to stand out, away from the background," The Preacher said. "You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence.

If we are cultivating fruit in an orchard, we wish that particular fruit to grow in its own way; we give it the soil it needs, the amount of moisture, the amount of care, but we do not treat the apple tree as we would the pear tree or the peach tree as we would the vineyard on the hillside. Each is allowed the freedom of its own kind and the result is the perfection of growth which can be accomplished in no other way. The time must come when the same freedom is allowed the individual; each in his own way must develop according to nature's purpose, the body must be but the channel for the expression of purpose, interest, emotion, labor. Everywhere freedom must be the sign of reason.

I stood there in the doorway before you saw me and I watched you,' he said.'And I watched the other girls. And they all looked as though their faces came out of one mold. Yours didn’t.

When I speak of good hearing, I do not mean listening to others; I mean simply listening to yourself. When I speak of good eyesight, I do not mean looking at others; I mean simply looking at yourself. He who does not look at himself but looks at others, who does not get hold of himself but gets hold of others, is getting what other men have got and failing to get what he himself has got. He finds joy in what brings joy to other men, but finds no joy in what would bring joy to himself.

Let us forget that we are Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Presbyterians, or Free-thinkers, and remember only that we are men and women. After all, man and woman are the highest possible titles. All other names belittle us, and show that we have, to a certain extent, given up our individuality, and have consented to wear the collar of authority—that we are followers. Throwing away these names, let us examine these questions not as partisans, but as human beings with hopes and fears in common.

when you're a poetyou can dish out whatever'son your mind and you don't have toapologize for it

Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.", December 6, 2011)]

Autists are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It's that you're destroying the peg.

I cannot deny that Vera, in her own way--in the way of all human beings who are kind and not cruel--really is lovely.

And so, what of it all? What of me and my passions and personas, my great loves and failures of love, my writing, my politics? What of the clanging opinions, the endless queries as to the whys and wherefores of how I chose to conduct myself? In the end, there is but one answer to every question, whether it is spit at me or made as gentlest inquiry: I was I.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.

Some bow to the spirit of collectivism, while you ascend to the spirit of your own eclectic rhythms.

Being an outsider doesn't necessarily indicate any sort of social failing. We do not view a tuba player as musically challenged if he cannot play the violin.

Processes of rationalization and disenchantment engender a shift from a social order founded upon value-rational beliefs and governed through charismatic and traditional forms of authority, to an order ruled by the force of instrumental reason and dominated by new forms of institutional bureaucracy. This movement results in the depersonalization of the social world: instrumental calculation steadily suppresses the passionate pursuit of ultimate values, and bureaucracy reduces the scope for individual initiative and personal fulfillment... instrumental reason... is not only tied to the devaluation or disenchantment of the highest and most sublime values and ideals, but places important limits on the scope for individual autonomy and freedom in the modern world.

I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable.

To be successfully independent, you must view life as if all of your love ones are dead and the world is against you.

Last night I was seriously considering whether I was a bisexual or not but I don’t think so though I’m not sure if I’d like to be and argh I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, if you like a person, you like the person, not their genitals.

Joining a sub-culture, any sub-culture, for whatever reason, is as I see it never a legitimate self-expression. It is always a result of sheep mentality; a wish to belong somewhere.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this.

If the chick is not able to break the shell of his egg, he will die without being born. We are - chick. The world - is our egg. If we do not break the shell of the world, then we will die without being born

Humanity is not an aggregate of individuals, a community of thinkers, each of whom is guaranteed from the outset to be able to reach agreement with the others because all participate in the same thinking essence. Nor, of course, is it a single Being in which the multiplicity of individuals are dissolved and into which these individuals are destined to be reabsorbed. As a matter of principle, humanity is precarious: each person can only believe what he recognizes to be true internally and, at the same time, nobody thinks or makes up his mind without already being caught up in certain relationships with others, which leads him to opt for a particular set of opinions. Everyone is alone and yet nobody can do without other people, not just because they are useful (which is not in dispute here) but also when it comes to happiness.

Every plant is an individual.Wrong again. We are not individuals at all, we are all connected. We are individuals the way each blossom on an apple tree is an individual.

The arts that have escaped [uniformity] best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it.

Please, touch me, I pray.

You are you. You are not a label. As an individual you have a unique place in my heart and mind.

Never give a conscious meaning to your unconscious acts!

Individuals with greed for power see others as elements to be oppressed.

I must shape my own coat according to my cloth, but it will not be after the fashion of this world, God willing, but fit for me.

Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard

We are against ignorance. We feel that you have to educate yourself, no matter what the situation is. People who refuse to educate themselves - people who refuse to find out what something is about, that they're frightened of - find comfort in being ignorant.”--Zeena Schreck Interview for KJTV-1990

I just never let anything bother me, man. I know myself really well. Nobody's opinion of me can shake my opinion of myself.

for meobedience to another is the decay of self.for though every being is similareach being is differentand to herd our differencesunder one lawdegrades each self.

Nowadays, ads don't just sell a product. They sell an attitude! Look at this one! Here's a cool guy saying nobody tells him what to do. He does whatever he wants and he buys this product as a reflection of that independence. So basically, this maverick is urging everyone to express his individuality through conformity in brand-name selection?

To me, the haircut represented beauty and strength, that I was a woman who would live her life without the boundaries imposed upon her by other people.

They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn't a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't want to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives-- although that's what we tell ourselves-- but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger.Don't know who I am? I'm an individual!

I’d love to step off this well-trodden straight and boring path. To somehow live differently, think different thoughts, feel different feelings than others. It wouldn’t bother me to be as alone as a tree on the plains. My leaves would be like no other tree’s.

Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-contained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no colour from the outer world.

Who could be like him? Who could ever be like you? Each of us has his path. They run close together sometimes—for life, if we are fortunate—but they never cross.

Let others determine your worth and you're already lost, because no one wants people worth more than themselves.

If you're "one in a million", and the world is full of seven billion people, that means there are seven thousand people just like you.

The thing that matters most is what matters to you, not anybody else.

If you are going to judge others it is wisest to do so individually not collectively and on your own direct experience of them personally. But first - and throughout - examine yourself closely. Blurred vision can often occur due to the lens, perspective and perceptions of the viewer projected onto the object that it sees. Be wary of taking to the judges seat. Above all meet at treat yourself and everyone else mindfully, compassionately with humanity.

If you see your country going through economic problems, the best thing to do is to come up with a strategy, plan and vision of how to affect the economy of the nation, rather than simply fixing your own individual economic problem.

To know our values is to have a foundation on which to build a great life. Our environment and education will play a large part in influencing our formulation of this world view, but is ultimately ourselves that have the final say. We must decide what we value, and then live accordingly. After all, in the eyes of the world we could achieve great success, but if our actions do not coincide with what we ourselves truly deem worthy, we will find no peace.

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.

Every system of power in the world has a vested interest in weakening the individuality of its subjects and tries to weaken or it possible completely extinguish it.

My head’ll explode if I continue with this escapism.

Families can also be divided into subgroups with different values, perspectives, and and communication styles, even if a subgroup consists of only one individual.

When you don't know yourself, who you are and what you want, you just become a product of your environment - a leaf that gets blown each and every way until it just lands, in a big pile of mud, and gets stuck.

Why does it scare me to think I might be ordinary? I remember when I started first grade and I could hardly pay attention for fear I wouldn't learn to read and write. I didn't want to be like everyone else. I didn't want to have to learn. I wanted to know everything already

A fair and just society offers equality of opportunity to all. But it cannot promise, and should not try to enforce, sameness.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.

Being an American is about having the right to be who you are. Sometimes that doesn't happen.

There were those who loved liberty, who cried out to live their own lives, to strive, to rise above, to achieve, and those bent on the mindless equality of stagnation brought about through the enforcement of an artificial, arbitrary, gray uniformity--those who wanted to transcend through their own effort, and those who wanted others to think for them and were willing to pay the ultimate price.

Be yourself because an original is always worth more than a copy.

I suppose it’s not a social norm, and not a manly thing to do — to feel, discuss feelings. So that’s what I’m giving the finger to. Social norms and stuff…what good are social norms, really? I think all they do is project a limited and harmful image of people. It thus impedes a broader social acceptance of what someone, or a group of people, might actually be like.

Her bluebird of happiness is teal.