Quotes About Individuality

It is precisely those who are apparently aloof from the world who build for themselves a remarkable and thoroughly individual world in miniature, using their own special equipment, termite-like.

Without the extension and/or transcendence of self-love, survival is not the kind of survival that sets humans apart from the beasts (and--never forget it--the angels).

Avoid the crowd, avoid mass audiences, keep your own counsel, which is the counsel of philosophy--of wisdom you can acquire and make your own.

Robbing humans of their faces and individuality is no less a form of evil than diminishing their dignity or looking for threats primarily among those who have immigrated or harbour different religious beliefs.

Los símbolos de decisiones identitarias grabados en el propio cuerpo sugieren, por el contrario, que la identidad que estos implican es, para el sujeto portador, un compromiso más serio y duradero, y no solo un capricho momentáneo. El tatuaje, milagro entre milagros, señala al mismo tiempo la estabilidad (tal vez incluso la irreversibilidad) intencional del compromiso y la libertad de elección que caracteriza la idea de derecho a la autodefinición y a su ejercicio.

Añora la unidad y hace de todo ser humano alguien incompleto y deficiente a menos que se una a otro, por más realizado y autosuficiente que sea en otros aspectos.

The updated version of Descartes's Cogito is 'I am seen, therefore I am' – and that the more people who see me, the more I am…

The things that make me different are the things that make me.

Though you are Ivanov the seventh, you're a fool all the same.

Damn, some days I wished I'd been made a toaster.

The cacophony in my head is completely unmanageable, and it's out of the failure to blend all those dissonant voices smoothly that whatever individuality I might have has managed to emerge. Imitation is the condition of originality. Or, to put it another way: imitation is the shortest route to and the truest test of proficiency. To mimic a master requires skill and practice, which become the sources of your own mastery.

You'd look beautiful in a feedbag dress tied in the middle with a rope.

One measure of a civilization, in fact, is the percentage of misfits in its society.

I used to get upset if somebody I didn't like loved a book I loved. That's MY book, I'd think.

other people's condiments are depressing.

Lots of people in my somewhat leaky boat are on the lookout for a human companion. Not me. I have learned to love the inside of my own head. There isn't much I'd rather say than think.

Above all, remember that the meaning of life is to live as if it were a work of art. You're not a machine. When you're young, start working on this great work of art called your own existence.

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

Anybody will do for you, but not for me. I must have somebody .

Towering genius disdains a beaten path... It sees no distinction in adding story to story... It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it...

Avoid popularity if you would have peace

We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty... We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. --April 18, 1864 Address at Baltimore

How this is possible is, first, by being, literally, several in a single body. "We are twelve in my body. We are packed like sardines." In other words, the being that I am exists each time in several modes—or, let us say, several beings, which, although sometimes mutually exclusive, are nevertheless inside one another.