Quotes About Individuality

Night is irregular. What is not done in the daytime becomes possible at night: murder and sex and thought. Simple men are driven to early beds by tomorrow's daytime demands and by fear of the dark, and never dream of the irregular world outside. And all the while, a viscount and a spaceport baggage boy might be passing the night rolling bok ball in the city park. That's more than unusual -- that is irregular.

The trouble is that each of us is his own hero, existing in a world of spear carriers.

I don't like the idea of people who don't sing to themselves when they're all alone. They're too sober for me. At least hum-- anybody can do that.

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor as such differences become less, it grows feeble and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

We need a sense of the unity of life and of humans for the sake of human welfare and for the survival of the planet. We need a sense of unity with the cosmos so that we can connect with Reality. But we also need a sense of individuality, for the sake of our own dignity and independence and of the loving care for others. We need it to appreciate each natural form, each animal and plant, each human person in their uniqueness.

One pays a price for innovation, and innovators, knowing this, are hardly conciliators: books are not written specifically to please others; they are written, like it or not, to please oneself.

Me salí de mi carne, gocé el goce más alto: oponer una frase de basalto al genio oscuro que nos desintegra.

Casas enfiladas, casas enfiladas, casas enfiladas, Cuadrados, cuadrados, cuadrados, casas enfiladas. Las gentes ya tienen el alma cuadrada, ideas en fila y angula en la espalda; yo mismo he vertido ayer una lagrima, Dios mio, cuadrada.

Nature is so rich and the possibilities of stimuli, instincts and mistakes are so numerous, that it is not possible for two persons to be exactly identical.

Ich werde es hoffentlich stets ablehnen, Menschen überzeugen zu wollen. Man kann nur versuchen, ihnen die Möglichkeiten zu zeigen, aus denen sie wählen können. Schon das ist anmaßend genug, denn wer kennt die Möglichkeiten, die der andere hat? Der andere ist nicht nur der Mitmensch, sondern auch der ganz andere, den man niemals erkennen kann. Außer. man liebte ihn.

Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.

Show me your garden, provided it be your own, and I will tell you what you are like.

If a man's got talent and guts to buck society, he's obviously above average. You want to hold on to him. You straighten him out and turn him into a plus value. Why throw him away? Do that enough and all you've got left are the sheep.

I'm not a robot. I'm a freak of the universe ... a thinking animal ... and I'm trying to see my way clear through this morass.

You're all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory.

No one should let himself fall slave to his own opinion.

How glorious it is — and also how painful — to be an exception.

How glorious it is – and also how painful – to be an exception.

Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!

What I need is a woman who is something, anything: either very beautiful or very kind or in the last resort very wicked; very witty or very stupid, but something.

I don't like to work with assistants. I'm already one too many the camera alone would be enough.

I don't want anybody suspecting I am some sheep and part of the Washington D.C. establishment.

I was a WASP kid going to a high school that was 99 percent Jewish and I wanted attention and I wanted to make a spectacle of myself because I couldn't stand to be ignored.