Quotes About Individuality

I am very slow to warm. I've always been sort of a loner. I didn't play team sports. I am better one-on-one than in big groups

I've swum for my country, I've swum for my coaches and my schools and my teams. I decided this time I was going to swim for myself.

The Oscars are a really strange concept to me, that films and acting can be competing against each other. We're not running the same race. It's like we're all doing different sports in fact.

It is of far more important that a man shall play something himself, even if he plays it badly, than that he shall go with hundreds of companions to see someone else play well.

We didn't call it a sport necessarily, and skaters definitely weren't thought of as athletes, we were thought of as misfits.

I'm in trouble because I'm normal and slightly arrogant. A lot of people don't like themselves and I happen to be totally in love with myself.

But I just think as a captain, everybody's different.

I didn't really care if I had a coach that much, me personally, because I was brought up to think for myself.

I didn't want to be the sissy figure skater, you know.

I know it sounds selfish, wanting to do something no one else has done. But that's what you're out here for - to separate yourself from everyone else.

Well, Rickey's not one of them, so that's 49 percent right there.

Disability is a characteristic like hair color; it's not a defining principle.

People tend to box little girls in. They teach them to sit properly and stand quietly and not attract attention. Sports is one place where girls can be free and enjoy the exhilaration of movement.

Surfing is real private. It's a solo, loner sport.

How many people in the world is, each of them is individual. And I like to eat bread, somebody don't like that. You know this is the same in gymnastics.

I have never believed in comparisons, whether they are about different eras, players or coaches.

I didn't come to New York to be a star. I brought my star with me.

Finding such a person makes everyone else appear so ordinary…and if anything happens to him, you've got nothing left but to return to the ordinary world, and a kind of isolation that never existed before.

To cry out that the emperor had no clothes on was at least to pick on one man only to the amusement of everyone else; to declare that almost everyone is dressed in rags is much less likely to be popular.

Ma forse in ogni caso è difficile rimanere amici per tutta la vita. In realtà, a un certo momento, ognuno di noi cambia, diviene diverso, alcuni vanno avanti, altri rimangono fermi, e insomma ci incamminiamo in direzioni opposte, sicché non c'è più incontro, non c'è più nulla in comune. [Quaderno proibito]

The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions. ( Essay to Leo Baeck , 1953)

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.

Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that lack of civilization in high boots