Quotes About Individual

El Estado es para los hombres y no los hombres para el Estado. Como deber primero del Estado veo la protección del individuo, así como ofrecerle la posibilidad de desarrollar una personalidad creativa.

Why must every individual and every nation tremble for their existence? Because each seeks his own wretched momentary advantage and refuses to subordinate it to the welfare and prosperity of the community.

Never before have I lived through a storm like the one this night. … The sea has a look of indescribable grandeur, especially when the sun falls on it. One feels as if one is dissolved and merged into Nature. Even more than usual, one feels the insignificance of the individual, and it makes one happy.

Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society, nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative personalities able to think and judge independently, the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.

Creo que la negativa al servicio militar por razones de conciencia, en caso que fiera hecha por cincuenta mil soldados, sería un poder irresistible. El individuo solo no puede obtener mucho. Aunque tampoco puede ser deseable que justamente los seres de más valor sean objeto de la destrucción por parte de esa maquinaria detrás de la cual se esconden tres grandes poderes: Imbecilidad, Temor y Codicia.

Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.

Desde siempre, el poder del lector ha suscitado toda clase de temores (...)temor al lector individual que puede, a partir de un texto, redefinir el universo y rebelarse contra sus injusticias.

No social stability without individual stability.

Ironically enough, the only people who can hold up indefinitely under the stress of modern war are psychotics. Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity.

Our vanity makes us exaggerate the importance of human life; the individual is nothing; Nature cares only for the species.

The function of the well-intentioned individual, acting in isolation, is to formulate or disseminate theoretical truths. The function of the well-intentioned individuals in association is to live in accordance with those truths, to demonstrate what happens when theory is translated into practice, to create small-scale working models of the better form of society to which the speculative idealist looks forward.

Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity

Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself.

I mean what does a democracy depend on? A democracy depends on the individual voter making an intelligent and rational choice for what he regards as his enlightened self-interest, in any given circumstance.

Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born.

Liberation from prevailing conventions of thought, feeling and behaviour is accomplished most effectively by the practice of disinterested virtues and through direct insight into the real nature of ultimate reality. (Such insight is a gift, inherent in the individual; but, though inherent, it can not manifest itself completely except where certain conditions are fulfilled. The principle pre-condition of insight is, precisely, the practice of disinterested virtues.)

no offense is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behavior. Murder kills only the individual--and after all, what is an individual? With a sweeping gesture he indicated the rows of microscopes, the test tubes, the incubators. We can make a new one with the greatest ease-- as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself.

Cuando el individuo siente, la comunidad se resiente.

When the Individual feels, the community reels.

Meaningless pseudoknowledge has at all times been one of the principal motivators of individual and collective action. And that is one of the reasons why the course of human history has been so tragic and at the same time so strangely grotesque.

The individual, he began in a soft and sadly philosophical tone, is not a self-supporting universe. There are times when he comes into contact with other individuals, when he is forced to take cognisance of the existence of other universes besides himself. He

Cuanto mayores son los talentos de un hombre más grande es su poder de corromper a los demás. Y es mejor que sufra uno solo a que se corrompan muchos. (...) El asesino sólo mata al individuo, y, al fin y al cabo, ¿qué es un individuo? Podemos fabricar otro nuevo con la mayor facilidad; tantos como queramos.

His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. . . Murder kills only the individual - and, after all, what is an individual?

In so far as it helps the individual to forget himself and his ready-made opinions about the universe, religion will prepare the way for realization. In so far as it arouses and justifies such passions as fear, scrupulosity, righteous indignation, institutional patriotism and crusading hate, in so far as it harps on the saving virtues of certain theological notions, certain hallowed arrangements of words, religion is an obstacle in the way of realization.