Quotes About Individualism

The difference is that one system involves each individual making choices for himself or herself, while the other system involves a small number of people making choices for millions of others.

If there is an optimistic aspect of preferential doctrines, it is that they may eventually make so many Americans so sick of hearing of group labels and percentages that the idea of judging each individual on his or her own performance may become more attractive than ever.

We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society where no one is responsible for what he himself did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past.

I sense that striving for wholeness is, increasingly, a countercultural goal, as fragmented people make for better consumers, buying more bits and pieces—two or more cars, two homes and all that fills them—and outfitting one's body for a wide variety of identities: business person, homebody, amateur athlete, traveler, theater or sports fan. Things exercise a certain tyranny over us.

Our idol of the autonomous individual is a sham; the truth is we expect everyone to be the same, and dismiss as elitist those who are working through a call to any genuine vocation. It may be that our culture so fears the necessary other that it has grown unable to identify and name real differences without becoming defensive about them.

When people speak in the same tone of voice about a "personal deodorant," a "personal trainer," and a "personal Savior," I suspect that what they really mean is "private." I've got mine; too bad about you. But Christianity, like its ancestor Judaism, is inescapably communal.

Finch was his own country, the government unstable, the population volatile.

What is a drop of rain, compared to the storm? What is a thought, compared to the mind? Our unity is full of wonder which your tiny individualism cannot even conceive.

When I was young I was called a rugged individualist. When I was in my fifties I was considered eccentric. Here I am doing and saying the same things I did then and I'm labeled senile.

The revolutionary generation believed, to a man, that freedom and reason are the necessary preconditions of truth.

Vivimos en una sociedad obsesionada con la conciencia de uno mismo, la autoestima, el placer y otras maneras de centrarse en el individuo.

in so far as society is itself composed of de-individualized human beings, it is completely at the mercy of ruthless individualists.

Mass psychology is egoism raised to an inconceivable power, for its goal is immanent and not transcendent.

The direct outcome of this renunciation is individualism,71 that is, the need for a realization of individuality, a realization of man as he is.

in so far as society is itself composed of de-individualized human beings, it is completely at the mercy of ruthless individualists. Let it band together into groups and organizations as much as it likes – it is just this banding together and the resultant extinction of the individual personality that makes it succumb so readily to a dictator. A million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one.

The first of the Baby Boomers. It's all about them.

eu nunca tive porra de ideal nenhum, eu só queria era salvar a minha, veja só que coisa mais individualista elitista capitalista, eu só queria era ser feliz, cara, gorda, burra, alienada e completamente feliz.

From Descartes's skepticism came the radical belief that the individual seeking certainty trumped a God or king bestowing truth.

The task of a craftsman, they conclude, "is not to generate meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill of discerning the meanings that are already there." This frees the craftsman of the nihilism of autonomous individualism, providing an ordered world of meaning.

The Enlightenment's metaphysical embrace of the autonomous individual leads not just to a boring life," Dreyfus and Kelly worry; "it leads almost inevitably to a nearly unlivable one.

Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.

We need a new kind of feminism, one that stresses personal responsibility and is open to art and sex in all their dark, unconsoling mysteries.

It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Never in history have women had more freedom of choice in regard to dress, behavior, career, and sexual orientation.

La vida la hemos olvidado. Para nosotros no existen ya más horizonte que los que hemos preferido elegir, lo cual viene a ser una ventaja, sin duda alguna. El mundo empieza y acaba a cuatro metros de nosotros mismos, alrededor de nuestra cama, y las gentes que gozan de los placeres de la existencia, los hombres y las mujeres que ríen y bailan desafortunadamente, que se aman y se besan sin tiento y sin medida, no son nuestros hermanos.