Quotes About Individualism

I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium... - but man as part of a movement or a crowd is ... inhuman... the only feelings I have are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.... Patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.

man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have – for what they are – are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.

I speak only for myself, mind – it is my own truth alone – but man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have – for what they are – are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.

Life's all about 'me' anyway

The neighbors... hadn't, thankfully, done the usual by saying that Losley was a pleasant neighbor who'd kept herself to herself. (Always delivered in a tone of voice that suggested that, since keeping oneself to oneself was the single greatest thing one English person could do for another, the suspect ought to be excused whatever psychopathic shit they'd visited on other people.)

I honestly see the battle between Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative as the exact same dynamic--there's a group of people in this world that don't like conflict and care about what other people are going through, and then there's this other group of people in the world who hate that. 'Suck it up, man, we're not coddling you, take care of yourself, what's your problem?' It's jocks versus geeks, and I've always referred to life as perpetual high school because it never stops.

The object in America is to avoid contact, to treat all as foes unless they're known to be friends. Here you have a million crabs living in a million crevices.

A great programmer, on a roll, could create a million dollars worth of wealth in a couple weeks. A mediocre programmer over the same period will generate zero or even negative wealth (e.g. by introducing bugs). This is why so many of the best programmers are libertarians. In our world, you sink or swim, and there are no excuses.

And father said I never wanted this. I'm sick of everyone pretending to be old Dan Beavers in his L. L. Bean moccasins, and his Dubbelwares, and his Japanese bucksaw -- all these fake frontiersmen with their chuck wagons full of Twinkies and Wonderbread and aerosol cheese spread. Get out the Duraflame log and the plastic cracker barrel, Dan, and let's talk self-sufficiency!

Somehow I had learned from Thoreau, who doubtless learned it from Confucius, that if a man comes to do his own good for you, then must you flee that man and save yourself

I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.

The argument for collectivism is simple; free market is not.

Art = a mad search for individualism.

Making art in America is about saving one's soul.

Everything is permitted, everything is allowed, and all our Gods we have outwitted, we are running with the crowd.

Right now I'm the greatest. I don't say this through vanity. It's just that the rest are so bad.

Capitalism is an art form.

Democracy: An institution in which the whole is equal to the scum of the parts.

All is egotism. The only people whose mainspring is not egotism are the dead and perhaps idiots.

Picasso is a communist. Neither am I.

That's wonderful. I do like a man that tells you right out he's looking out for himself. Don't we all? I don't trust a man that says he's not. And the man that's telling the truth when he says he's not I distrust most of all, because he's and ass and an ass that's going contrary to the laws of nature.

Classical liberalism doesn't demand that you bow to it. It instructs you to make a decision for yourself. Then, through that process, we can figure out what is best for a society at large.

Instead of focusing on what we can have for "free," or on who we can take from to fund trendy, idealistic projects like the Green New Deal, let's focus on keeping what we earn and cutting spending wherever possible.

This is because self-reliance is one of the things authoritarians try to take away first.