What we’re all striving for is authenticity, a spirit-to-spirit connection.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
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 Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Why fit in when you were born to stand out?
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (1904–91) American Children’s Books Writer, Writer, Cartoonist, Animator
Each mind hath its own method.—A true man never acquires after college rules.—What you have yourself aggregated in a natural manner surprises and delights when it is produced.—We cannot oversee each other’s secret.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Individuality is freedom lived.
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970) American Novelist, Artist
My misfortune is doubly painful to me because it will result in my being misunderstood. For me there can be no recreation in the company of others, no intelligent conversation, no exchange of information with peers; only the most pressing needs can make me venture into society. I am obliged to live like an outcast.
—Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Composer, Musician
Today we come across an individual who behaves like an automaton, who does not know or understand himself, and the only person that he knows is the person that he is supposed to be, whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech, whose synthetic smile has replaced genuine laughter, and whose sense of dull despair has taken the place of genuine pain. Two statements may be said concerning this individual. One is that he suffers from defects of spontaneity and individuality which may seem to be incurable. At the same time it may be said of him he does not differ essentially from the millions of the rest of us who walk upon this earth.
—Erich Fromm (1900–80) German-American Psychoanalyst, Social Philosopher
Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.
—David Bohm (1917–92) American Theoretical Physicist
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 Gustav Jung (1875–1961) Swiss Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher
The individual in the ordinary circumstances of living may feel more unreal than real; in a literal sense, more dead than alive; precariously differentiated from the rest of the world, so that his identity and autonomy are always in question…. He may not possess an over-riding sense of personal consistency or cohesiveness. He may feel more insubstantial than substantial, and unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, valuable. And he may feel his self as partially divorced from his body.
—R. D. Laing (1927–89) Scottish Psychiatrist
Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles. Why should we all dress after the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows twice alike.
—Lydia Maria Child (1802–80) American Abolitionist, Writer
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 (1928–87) American Painter, Printmaker, Film Personality
All these years I’ve been feeling like I was growing into myself. Finally, I feel grown.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
I don’t think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
Not armies, not nations, have advanced the race; but here and there, in the course of ages, an individual has stood up and cast his shadow over the world.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–80) American Preacher, Poet
It was perhaps ordained by Providence, to hinder us from tyrannizing over one another, that no individual should be of so much importance as to cause, by his retirement or death, any chasm in the world.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Practical to the end,
it is the poem
of his existence
that triumphed
finally;…
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American Poet, Novelist, Cultural Historian
Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.
—William James (1842–1910) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician
If you’d never been born, then you might be an Isn’t! An Isn’t has no fun at all. No, he disn’t.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (1904–91) American Children’s Books Writer, Writer, Cartoonist, Animator
If you come to fame not understanding who you are, it will define who you are.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
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 (b.1929) Czech Novelist
The epoch of individuality is concluded, and it is the duty of reformers to initiate the epoch of association. Collective man is omnipotent upon the earth he treads.
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72) Italian Patriot, Political Leader
Personal history must be constantly renewed by telling parents, relatives, and friends everything one does. On the other hand, for the warrior who has no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with his acts. And above all, no one pins him down with their thoughts and their expectations.
—Carlos Castaneda (1925–98) Peruvian-born American Anthropologist, Author
In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
—Karl Marx (1818–1883) German Philosopher, Economist
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 (1806–73) English Philosopher, Economist
Never Forget!- The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Your labor only may be sold, your soul must not.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature—and the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning—and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or “The Fountainhead” that they will betray: it is their own souls.
—Ayn Rand (1905–82) Russian-born American Novelist, Philosopher