Quotes About Individualism

What's wrong with selfishness and egotism? We live to die smiling, don't we?

But was it wrong to put yourself first? That's called survival, right? If you're running for your life, you don't get the luxury of being nice. They were going to learn that. It's fine to wave the pompoms for teamwork—all for one and one for all—but when push came to shove, these guys wouldn't be risking their lives for Chloe, maybe not even for each other. I was sure of it. Once things got worse, it would be every kid for himself. It always is.

And that would be sufficient, if we lived in a world that was ruled by laws." Aldred sat on a stool, leaned forward, and spoke quietly. "But the man matters more than the law, as you know.

The 'will to power and independence' has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered normal.

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.

Around World War II, we were proud as a people but modest as individuals. Fewer than two people in ten said yes when asked, Are you a very important person? Today, more than six in ten say yes. Where we once thought ourselves collectively strong, we now regard ourselves as individually entitled.

My opposition is based on two grounds; first, the right of every rational being to become a "Priest unto himself," and by the test of enlightened reason, to form his own unbiased judgment of all things natural and spiritual:

My opposition is based on two grounds; first, the right of every rational being to become a "Priest unto himself," and by the test of enlightened reason, to form his own unbiassed judgment of all things natural and spiritual: second, that the reputation of the Bishops who extracted these books from the original New Testament, under the pretence of being Apocryphal, and forbade them to be read by the people, is proved by authentic impartial history too odious to entitle them to any deference.

Chaque homme est son propre dieu. C'est en choisissant un autre qu'il se renie et devient aveugle et injuste.

Instead, he defined individualism as the freedom to achieve and the obligation to return something of value to the community that had nurtured and sustained him. I believe this was both the source and object of his philanthropy. As

He had a wide-ranging knowledge of antislavery activism. He shared the loathing of slavery that was the common denominator among all its varieties, including Garrisonian radicalism, the evangelicalism of the Beechers and Finneys, Transcendentalist individualism, and the political approach of the Liberty and Free Soil Parties. Of the varieties, he strongly preferred the latter

There were larger reasons for Walter Whitman's travails. He was a blunt-spoken worker accustomed to honest self-sufficiency in a time when the market was calling for new traits: slickness and self-promotion, with more than a dash of craft. He might love cattle, children, and living under his own roof, but what he needed in the new environment was an eye for the deal.

Whitman would be appalled in the 1850s when holiday celebrations began to be mass-oriented spectacles manipulated by professionals. One of his most famous poetic lines—" I celebrate myself"—can be taken, on one level, as an attempt to restore the idea of celebration, which was fast becoming coldly manipulative, to the personal and genuinely celebratory.

the Indian "must be imbued with the exalting egotism of American civilization so that he will say 'I' instead of 'We,' and 'This is mine' instead of 'This is ours.

Given the individualism that is endemic to much of white Christianity, it will be important to regularly teach the communal nature of the Lord's Supper. If we are to be shaped toward solidarity by the Communion meal, this note will need to be sounded more clearly by preachers and teachers.

he thought that human beings are, by and large, rather nasty. They can rarely be bothered to help one another, he noted, but are quick to seize any opportunity to do each other down.9 Moreover there was a bias in the world of which he had become acutely aware: most people were ignorant, and nothing provoked the hostility of the ignorant as much as people who knew more than they did.10 Although

You may all go to he'll and I will go to Texas.

You may all go to hell, and I'll go to Texas.

The politics of redistribution is being replaced by the politics of recognition. How much fun will it be to recognize how poor and atomized we all become!

Alexis de Tocqueville.

A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.

Il traiterait presque avec mépris ses frères et ses copains qui emploient leurs loisirs à taper niaisement dans un ballon.

iGen'ers' drumbeats of growing up slowly, individualism, and safety all manifest themselves in their exceedingly cautious attitude toward relationships.