Quotes About Individual

The function of the society is to cultivate the individual. It is not the function of the individual to support society.

Nostalgia is a form of depression both for a society and an individual.

There can be no autonomous agent with unitary interests called 'society' that exerts causal influence. This is a logical impossibility

Utopia' used to denote a coveted, dreamt-of distant goal to which progress should, could and would eventually bring the seekers after a world better serving human needs. In contemporary dreams, however, the image of 'progress' seems to have moved from the discourse of shared improvement to that of individual survival. Progress is no longer thought about in the context of an urge to rush ahead, but in connection with a desperate effort to stay in the race.

Quando (como notavelmente formulado por Erich Fromm) "cada indivíduo deve ir em frente e tentar sua sorte", quando "ele tem que nadar ou afundar" — "a busca compulsiva da certeza" se instala, começa a desesperada busca por "soluções" capazes de "eliminar a consciência da dúvida" — o que quer que prometa "assumir a responsabilidade pela 'certeza'" é bem-vindo.5

One deed of an individual may decide the fate of the world. "If he performs one good deed, blessed is he for he moves the scale both for himself and for the entire world to the side of merit; if he commits one transgression, woe to him for he moves to the side of guilt himself and the whole world.

There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious.

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.

January] 2nd. [1863] When an individual in a church or out of it becomes dangerous to the public interest, he must be checked; but let the churches, as such, take care of themselves.

He is not my equal in many respects, but in his right to enjoy 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' in his right to put into his mouth the bread that his hands have earned, he is my equal...

In Paris explanations come in a predictable sequence, no matter what is being explained. First comes the explanation in terms of the unique, romantic individual, then the explanation in terms of ideological absolutes, and then the explanation in terms of the futility of all explanation.

In a nation distracted by faction, there are, no doubt, always a few, though commonly but a very few, who preserve their judgment untainted by the general contagion. They seldom amount to more than, here and there, a solitary individual, without any influence, excluded, by his own candour, from the confidence of either party, and who, though he may be one of the wisest, is necessarily, upon that very account, one of the most insignificant men in the society.

Deuxième maxime. - La taxe ou portion d'impôt que chaque individu est tenu de payer doit être certaine, et non arbitraire.

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations

Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in his view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.

The location of the servant is precisely his service. And the Lord, who is everywhere, is for the servant at the place where he will have him. In the sphere of Christ, which is an infinite sphere, a particular path of the imitation of Christ is prescribed by the will of the Lord for each individual. This imitation can extend to every area that the Lord assigns to a human being so that he may walk there.

intellectuals became preoccupied with an aspiration as fundamental in humans as the urge for individual autonomy: the need to belong.

The best way I can think to describe it, she said, ' is the way, when you're driving on the freeway at night how everyone can see the moon in their window. Every car on the road. Every car feels the moon is following that car, even in the other direction, right? Everyone in that entire hemisphere can see the moon and think it is there for them, is following where they go.

He had a good face to him, something chunky in his nose that I could get behind.

Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?

It seems as if, in making a marriage, either the individual or the interest of the species must come off badly.

Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who theorised that a society would grow wealthy to the extent that its members forfeited general knowledge in favour of fostering individual ability in narrowly constricted fields.

what effacement of the individual ego, a life in science now entailed.

In the course of his own life and it''s misfortunes, he (a man) will look less at his own individual lot than at the lot of mankind as a whole, and accordingly will conduct himself ... more as a knower than as a sufferer. - Schopenhauer