Quotes About Individuality

The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!

Yes, there is an outside world, and yes, there is an objective reality, but in moving through this world, we constantly apply unconscious filter mechanisms, and in doing so, we unknowingly construct our own individual world, which is our "reality tunnel.

Even if we acknowledge the existence of distinct and irreducible perspectives, the wish for a unified conception of the world doesn't go away. If we can't achieve it in a form that eliminates individual perspectives, we may inquire to what extent it can be achieved if we admit them.

If of a number of shreds of his sentences he can shape an oration, from all the world hee carries it awaie, although in truth it be no more than a fooles coat of many coulours. No inuention or matter haue they of theyr owne, but tacke vp a stile of his stale galimafries. The leaden headed Germanes first began this, and we Englishmen haue surfetted of their absurd imitation. I pittie Nizolius that had nothing to doe, but picke thrids ends out of an olde ouerworne garment.

it scarce hath been heard there were ever two men that dreamed alike

Mind thine own concerns. If he believes not as thou believest, it is a proof that thou believest not as he believes, and there is no earthly power can determine between you.

A good opinion of ourselves is exceedingly necessary in private life, but absolutely necessary in public life, and of the utmost importance in supporting national character.

U zult me toch willen nageven dat ik altijd sterk heb benadrukt dat elk mens het recht heeft op een eigen mening, hoezeer die mening ook van de mijne afwijkt. Hij die een ander dit recht ontzegt, maakt zichzelf tot slaaf van zijn huidige mening, omdat hij zichzelf dan het recht ontneemt deze te veranderen.

I shall neither copy their humility, nor disturb their devotion.

And herein lies the solution to the riddle of existence--to take a part of the Infinite Life, give it individuality by incarnating it in human flesh, multiplying and projecting it through human personality, polishing and refining it through the vicissitudes of material environment, until it comes to express so much of the Infinite character that to have seen it is to have seen God.

Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength.

I came," she said, "hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy." Cherish it!" cried Hilarious, fiercely. "What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by it's little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.

Existence precedes essence. What you are (your essence) is the result of your choices (your existence) rather than the reverse. Essence is not destiny. You are what you make yourself to be.

While the supreme value of existentialist thought is commonly acknowledged to be freedom, its primary virtue is authenticity.

They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep.

It taught me, at an early age, that being wrong can be dangerous, but being right, when society regards the majority's falsehood as truth, could be fatal.

Why don't you have a right to say you are Jesus? And why isn't the proper response to that "congratulations"?

A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.

Some people say they haven't yet found themselves. But the self is not something one finds; it is something one creates.

Some people say they haven't yet found themselves. But the self is not something one finds; it is something one

He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.

Because I am what I am, I may be what I will to be. My individuality is one of the modes in which the Infinite expresses itself, and therefore I am myself that very power which I find to be the innermost within of all things.

She seemed less my wife and more a woman in her own right, more self-reliant and independent. I felt I was looking at her in the round, so to speak, as one views a statue, from all sides, not merely a bas-relief with the figure partially imprisoned in the stone.

Her mirror was her only intimate, and she wanted its reflection to be the single most important statement she cared to make.