Quotes About Individuality

Even now, running for the most powerful position on the planet, a job that relies almost entirely on the power to persuade those around you, a job heavy on running a team and winning loyalty, even now Donald J. Trump said he made most of his decisions by himself, consulting no one: "I understand life," he said. "And I understand how life works. I'm the Lone Ranger." He

There are no exact analogies.

I wondered if small town people became smaller in order to fit. Perhaps they had to.

I'm not good at normal things. I can't drive a car. I couldn't read till I was 10.

He was blessed with an unconventional mind, which overcame his conventional middle-class upbringing.

Thomas Sowell once wrote, "Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.

The black flag comes in many colors.

A person who decrees "That's not funny" isn't in a position to define that for anyone, let alone everyone.

When you're a child the world forbears you, allows you your flights of imagination, your feelings of specialness. But sooner or later the privileges are withdrawn, and all you're left with is a stunned bitterness at the realisation that you're just the same as everybody else.

Everyone's alone in their world, because everybody's life is different. You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live. Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down.

I had never liked my parents so much that I wished to be reminded of them every time I walked into a room. I

Whereas literalists and fundamentalists tend to choose one pole of any dilemma or opposition, whereas modern political parties and religious groups tend towards demonizing each other, the creative individual must be born again and again in the crucible created by the tension between opposing instincts, conflicted feelings, and contrasting ideas.

Our deepest longings and the question of who we are intended to be cuts us in half, dividing us within ourselves. At critical stages and significant moments in the course of life, we sink with the weight of our own questions; we drown in our own psyche in order to reach a subtle ground that secretly sustains our every breath. In that sense, all separations, splits, and conflicts are evidence of a unity we long to find, both individually and collectively.

To become nobody but your true self and to struggle against the tide of sameness and the false security of simply fitting in is a fight worth having. To become oneself by contributing one's native gifts and talents to this troubled world: that is the job to keep applying for and a work worth spending an entire life doing.

When it comes to the human soul, the real battle is the struggle to truly become oneself. Not the self that others might want us to be, not even the self that we might wish to be; but the deep self and inner soul trying to awaken at critical crossroads in each life.

Searching outside oneself for what can only be found within can lead to a life lived in the wrong direction and sacrifices made for the wrong reasons. People can wind up alienated from themselves even if they achieve lofty goals set by others.

The issue is not simply one of needing to save the world, but also of needing to solve the problem of the loss of soul throughout the modern world. Part of what has been lost in the reckless rushing of modernity is the sense that each life has an authentic interior that shelters important emotions as well as inherent purpose, and that the dignity of existence includes a necessary instinct to unfold the unique story woven inside each living soul.

A community best serves itself when it truly serves the awakening of the unique story trying to come to life through each person born.

In the end, as at the beginning, the divine turns out to be most interested in the unique life of the individual soul. That's what was meant by the old idea that "inside people is where god learns." This is not a religious notion, but more of a spiritual insight. For this conversation god is simply the shortest way to refer to the divine. When a unique life becomes fully livedeveryone involved learns something and it becomes clear that god was involved all along.

The less we think about what others might be considering or thinking about us, the more likely we can live the story that our own souls came here to unfold and unveil to the world.

Traumatizing agents include the rise of mass culture and the subsequent diminishing of the individual soul, the spread of rampant materialism, and the rise of "connective" technologies that contribute to deep disconnections while "linking" people at surface levels of life.

There is a myth at the heart of things and some element of genius in the heart of each person.

Being his real brother I could feel I live in his shadows, but I never have and I do not now. I live in his glow.

Religion is like an art gallery. One painting will speak to you more than another, and there's no need to explain or defend your taste.