Quotes About Individualism

I probably have fundamentally antisocial tendencies. I never took one extracurricular activity. I just failed utterly at that level. Part of me still rebels against that.

From 1970 onwards, our culture told both sexes that individual expression was paramount. And for women, that was defined as the right to choose an interesting a career, a high-status mate, the desirable handbag or vacation, the perfect family size, and a definitionally fruitless quest for 'perfection.'

At the core of our American value system is individual freedom.

America has no one to catch you when you fall. That makes you want to achieve. It is healthy for the soul. But all that is valued is success.

The individual makes a clear effort to define moral values and principles that have validity and application apart from the authority of the groups of persons holding them and apart from the individual's own identification with the group.

Date night? It was always about me and what I wanted to do.

The strong individualism of U.S. society allows successful inventors to keep earnings for themselves, whereas strong family ties in New Guinea ensure that someone who begins to earn money will be joined by a dozen relatives expecting to move in and be fed and supported.

there've always been hippies of one kind or another. They just go under different names with each new generation. Bohemians, beatniks, dropouts, free spirits, freaks, whatever.

She knew enough about him to realize that no one would ever understand him unless he wished it, and that was highly unlikely. He was a man who operated alone, working by his own rules even when he was doing a job for his employers. Emily thought of him in the same way she thought of hurricanes, charging lions and marauding sharks. The only sensible thing to do when any of them was in the vicinity was to get out of the way.

When everything is social, suddenly nothing is.

We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.

I am abandoned in the world... in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, no matter what I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.

These people all fling themselves at me. Because I am uneasy and sad they all fling themselves at me larger than life. But I can put my arm up to avoid the impact and they slide gently to the ground. Individualists, completely wrapped up in themselves, thank God. It's the extrovert, prancing around, dying for a bit of fun - that's the person you've got to be wary of.

I didn't want to be in the teeming mass of the working class.... I didn't want to live and die in the same place with only a week at the seaside in between. I dreamed of escape -- but what is terrible about industrialisation is that it makes escape necessary. In a system that generates masses, individualism is the only way out. But then what happens to community -- to society?

Our broken society is not born out of the triumph of the individual, but out of his effacement. He vanishes, she vanishes, ask them who they are and they will offer you a wallet or a child.

Humans don't share; we exploit.

A man needs understanding because he is existentially alone. He stares into the darkness. That was the difference between men and women, Leo thought. Men need groups and gangs and sport and clubs and institutions and women because men know that there is only nothingness and self-doubt. Women were always trying to make a connection, build a relationship. As though one human being could know another.

Man's first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.

Qu'il voie par ses yeux, qu'il sente par son coeur ; qu'aucune autorité ne le gouverne, hors celle de sa propre raison.

it is to this ardor for making oneself the topic of conversation, to this furor to distinguish oneself which nearly always keeps us outside ourselves, that we owe what is best and worst among men, our virtues and vices, our sciences and our errors, our conquerors and our philosophers, that is to say, a multitude of bad things against a small number of good ones.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

People think they come together in the spectacle, and it is here that they are isolated.

I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It always made me want to do just the opposite.