Quotes About Individuality

You did not have to apologize for wanting to own your own soul. Your soul belonged to you—for better or worse. When all was said and done, it was all you had.

If only we could escape from always having to play ourselves!

Kad ne pišemo, mu?e nas takve trivijalne brige u kojima je središnja tema naš ego, ego, ego, pa i kriti?ari govore o toj istoj temi - ego, ego, ego. ?iji potpis? ?ija knjiga? Koja nagrada? Ali, jezik nema odre?enog autora - baš kao što rijeka ne brije ho?e li ostati u nekoj državi.

if sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body - and with it your own voice - and that's the most revolutionary insight of all

Mann ist was mann isst.

Mia?em okazj? ogl?da? fabryk? w formie panoramicznej: azjatyccy robotnicy w maskach, czapkach, wystrojeni w turkusowe bluzy byli ca?kiem do siebie podobni. Zadr?a?em... Czy taki w?a?nie by? nasz los? Wydaje nam si?, ?e jeste?my nadzwyczajni, chocia? pochodzimy z tej samej formy? Podobni nawet w przekonaniu o swojej wyj?tkowo?ci...

To wyobra?nia wyró?nia, wyobra?nia przeÅ'amuje pospolito??, powtarzalno??, jednolito??. W przeznaczeniu zabawek dostrzegÅ'em przeznaczenie ludzi: tylko wyobra?nia, tworzÄ…c fikcjÄ™ i wymarzone wiÄ™zi, rodzi coÅ› oryginalnego. Bez niej bylibyÅ›myy podobni, zbyt podobni, zbli?eni do siebie, rozpÅ'aszczeni jeden na drugich w koszach rzeczywistoÅ›ci.

Tu penses trop et pas assez parce que tu ne penses pas par toi-même.

PoÈ›i suferi de singur?tate chiar fiind în mijlocul alor t?i? Asta-i soarta omului care gândeÈ™te cu capul lui.

The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die - although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.

We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what he thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally - that is, for himself - which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts.

Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows 'what he wants,' while he actually wants what he is supposed to want. In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own.

The frightened individual seeks for somebody or something to tie his self to; he cannot bear to be his own individual self any longer, and he tries frantically to get rid of it and to feel security again by the elimination of this burden: the self.

Mature love is union under the condition of preserving one's integrity, one's individuality. Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unites him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me. If

We forget that, although each of the liberties which have been won must be defended with utmost vigour, the problem of freedom is not only a quantitative one, but a qualitative one; that we not only have to preserve and increase the traditional freedom, but that we have to gain a new kind of freedom, one which enables us to realize our own individual self; to have faith in this self and in life.

Escape from Freedom attempts to show, modern man still is anxious and tempted to surrender his freedom to dictators of all kinds, or to lose it by transforming himself into a small cog in the machine, well fed, and well clothed, yet not a free man but an automaton.

Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.

The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.

Freedom to creat and construct, to wonder and to venture. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine . . . It is not enough that men are not slaves; if social conditions further the existence of automatons, the result will not be love of life, but love of death.

The person who is normal in terms of being well adapted is often less healthy than the neurotic person in terms of human values. Often he is well adapted only at the expense of having given up his self in order to become more or less the person he believes he is expected to be.

Man does not suffer so much from poverty today as he suffers from the fact that he has become a cog in a large machine, an automaton, that his life has become empty and lost its meaning.

Also in contemporary Western society the union with the group is the prevalent way of overcoming separateness. It is a union which the individual self disappears to a large extent, and where the aim is to belong to the heard. If I am like everybody else, if I have no feeling or thoughts which make me different, if I conform in custom, dress, ideas, to the pattern of the group, I am saved: saved from the frightening experience of aloneness.