Quotes About Individualism

With the individual wielding unprecedented power to decide her own path in life, we find it ever harder to make commitments.

The collapse of the family and the local community and their replacement by the state and the market.

As money beings down the fans of community, religion and state, the world is in danger of becoming one big and rather heartless marketplace

We have lived through the epoch of suppression of the masses; we are living in an epoch of suppression of the individual in the name of the masses; tomorrow will bring the liberation of the individual -- in the name of man.

On the left hand path we take the direct route, which is much more strenuous, much more dangerous, and much more likely to cause you to fall.

All I want to be is very young always and very irresponsible and to feel that my life is my own-to live and be happy and die in my own way to please myself

But if you read Christie or Allingham or Sayers, the detective always got his man. And you'll notice that the detective always operated outside the system—the stories expressed a comforting belief in the validity of individual action.

Capitalism sold a flat white to me as if it were a cup of freedom.

Modern liberals do not sit anywhere along the conventional one-dimensional right-left spectrum of governmental coercion.

It's no accident that capitalism has brought with it progress, not merely in production but also in knowledge. Egoism and competition are, alas, stronger forces than public spirit and sense of duty.

Individualism is bad for business - though absolutely necessary for freedom, progressive knowledge, and any possible interface with the transcendent.

As we seek to eliminate individualism in teaching, we should not eradicate individuality with it.

You do not have to protect people's pocket books. They'll do a better job of that than you will.

I do not much believe in education. Each person ought to be his or her own model, however frightful that may be.

So much of learning to be an American is learning not to let your individuality become a nuisance.

I want every fan of Rand to hear [Polaha] say the classic Galt phrase: "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

Once, we were close and close-knit, but now we are unmoored islands, each alone, each a separate planet, drifting farther and farther away, content to turn ever inward . . . This is no idle solipsism; it has taken on the fragile brightness of truth. Cities turned from cities, self-devouring. Governments fragmenting into fragments of fragments. Entertainment become a solitary diversion. Solo adventures.

The free market is not a system. It is not a policy dictated by anyone in particular. It is not something that Washington implements. It does not exist in any legislation, law, bill, regulation, or book. It is what you get when people act on their own, entirely without central direction, and with their own property, and within human associations of their own creation and in their own interest. It is the beauty that emerges in absence of control.

I draw from the absurd three consequences. Which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion.

a boundless contempt for everything outside their art, for society, and above all, for politics. (64)

We must be for ourselves in the long run; the mild and generous are only more justly selfish than the domineering.

It is strange people should be so greedy when they are alone in the world!

It is so strange people should be so greedy, when they are alone in the world!

Well, we must be for ourselves in the long run; the mild and generous are only more justly selfish than the domineering — and it ended when circumstances caused each to feel that the one's interest was not the chief consideration in the other's thoughts.