Quotes About Individualism

The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. —Ayn Rand

He looked around at the others....They were all staring at their computers, or reading books or newspapers. Not one of them has noticed the weather. Maybe that's how the world was now....Everyone was so wrapped up in his or her own little world that no one ever really saw anything anymore.

Robie took a deep, cleansing breath. He had never played well with others. For the last dozen years he had worked in almost total isolation. He preferred it that way. He was better alone than with a team. That's just how he was built.

Maybe that's how the world was now, thought Dan. Everyone was so wrapped up in his or her own little world that no one ever really saw anything anymore.

you mean?" "My way of looking at the world is that some folks do what they want, and they don't care what happens to others, so long as it's good for them.

Because it taught me right from the start to rely only on myself," he said

Some forms of socialism and collectivism are – explicitly or implicitly – based on the notion that many people are not competent to make decisions about their own lives, so that the more talented should make decisions for them. But that would mean there were no universal human rights, only rights that some have and others do not, denying the essential humanity of those who are deemed to be owned.

3. We believe that people spend their own money more prudently than they spend other people's money. So goods and services produced in the competitive marketplace are likely to be produced more efficiently and with more regard for real consumer demand than goods produced by government, and thus we should try to keep as many aspects of life as possible outside the control of government.

As a moral matter, individuals must be free to make their own decisions and to succeed or fail according to their own choices. As a practical matter, as Frum points out, when we shield people from the consequences of their actions, we get a society characterized not by thrift, sobriety, diligence, self-reliance, and prudence but by profligacy, intemperance, indolence, dependency, and indifference to consequences.

Karl Popper once said that attempts to create heaven on earth invariably produce hell. Libertarianism holds out the goal not of a perfect society but of a better and freer one. It

humans wrestled endlessly with their own overpowering egos. Some tried suppressing selfness, seeking detachment. Others subsumed personal ambition in favor of a greater whole—family, religion, or a leader. Later they passed through a phase in which individualism was extolled as the highest virtue, teaching their young to inflate the ego beyond all natural limits or restraint.

I believe, as many say they believe, that everyone has the right to run his own life—to go to hell in his own fashion.

There are a surprising number who get their spiritual uplift week by week only from the comfort of their own living rooms or from their computers. They never go to church. Well, they "go" to church but do so in their own way.

The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism.

When a solipsist dies ... everything goes with him.

Today's sub-40s have different horrors, prominent among which are anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without once having loved something more than yourself.

I'm a typical American, half of me is dying to give myself away and the other half is continually rebelling.

You believe you would die twice for another but in truth would die only for your alone self, its sentiment.

A U.S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness: The happy pleasure of the person alone, yes?

U.S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness:

The counter woman seemed unaware that Toni Ware was affecting the exact accent and cadence of her own speech. The assumption that everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism.

U.S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness: 'The happy pleasure of the person alone, yes?

by Matt Jensen, who had himself

Of course I'm an egoist. Where do you get if you aren't?