Quotes about individuality

The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.

— Saul Alinsky

We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do.

— Ethel Barrett

Never follow the crowd.

— Bernard M. Baruch

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

— Joseph Campell

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.

— Albert Camus

Pin your faith to no ones sleeves, haven't you two eyes of your own.

— Thomas Carlyle

No one should part with their individuality and become that of another.

— William Ellery Channing

Losing faith in your own singularity is the start of wisdom, I suppose; also the first announcement of death.

— Peter Conrad

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.

— Charles Horton Cooley

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.

— James F. Cooper

Individuality is either the mark of genius or the reverse. Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.

— Frederick E. Crane

Follow your own star!

— Dante Alighieri

The trouble with the sacred Individual is that he has no significance, except as he can acquire it from others, from the social whole.

— Bernard Devoto

Everything without tells the individual that he is nothing; everything within persuades him that he is everything.

— X. Doudan

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.

— Marcel Duchamp

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.

— Albert Einstein

Our expenses are all for conformity.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.

— St. Francis De Sales

Every man must get to Heaven his own way.

— (Frederick II) Frederick The Great

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

— Robert Frost

Be yourself, who else is better qualified?

— Frank J. Giblin

Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.

— Remy De Gourmont

In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.

— Hermann Hesse

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?

— Rabbi Hillel

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.

— Eric Hoffer

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.

— Hubert H. Humphrey

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

— Aldous Huxley

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

— Carl Jung

Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.

— Carl Jung

Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.

— Nikita Khrushchev

The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.

— Arthur Koestler

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.

— Milan Kundera

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.

— Lewis H. Lapham

Be content to be what you are, and prefer nothing to it, and do not fear or wish for your last day.

— Marcus Valerius Martial

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

— Karl Marx

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.

— John Stuart Mill

That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

— John Stuart Mill

What ever crushes individuality is despotism, no matter what name it is called.

— John Stuart Mill

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.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

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.

— Pablo Picasso

The nail that sticks up will be hammered down.

— Japanese Proverb

Your labor only may be sold, your soul must not.

— John Ruskin

No one can transcend their own individuality.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

There used to be a real me, but I had it surgically removed.

— Peter Seller

A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.

— Seneca

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.

— Barbara Sher

The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind forward.

— Igor Sikorsky

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.

— Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Follow the crowd and you will never be followed by a crowd.

— Source Unknown

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

— Andy Warhol

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.

— Oscar Wilde

America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us.

— Woodrow T. Wilson

There is a war against the individual.

— James Dye

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.

— Christopher Morley

It is not your opponent but your weaknesses that hurt you the most.

— Apoorve Dubey