Best 1663 quotes in «individual quotes» category

My evanescent anarchistic tendencies are purely classical. I use the word anarchist in the sense in which it was understood by the ancient Greeks. They, of course, accepted the anarchist as a fairly respectable--if somewhat vehement--opponent of government encroachment on the individual's rights to think and act freely. It is in this sense that I glimpse myself as an anarchist--regretting the growth of government and the ever-increasing trend toward regulation and, worst of all, standardization of human activity.

No kind of social system can make you more happier and secure than your own money.

Only someone wishing to disappear would ever strive to 'fit in'.

My freedom to say 'No' directly underscores your freedom to say 'Yes'. RESPECT my freedom to PROTECT your freedom.

Only when you are being yourself, can you love someone or be with him or her truly. Honour your own wants, desires and dreams. Trust your own taste, judgements and choices before you can share yourself with anyone.

Onde a norma de conduta não é o próprio carácter, mas as tradições e costumes alheios, falta um dos principais ingredientes da felicidade humana e, de modo completo, o principal ingrediente do progresso individual e social.

Our goals can only be achieved with a society that respects and equally protects the rights of every human being, old and young, rich and poor, regardless of gender, color, race, or creed. We must reject the initiation of violence by individuals or government as morally repugnant.

People do not always remember that politics, economics, and social organisation generally, belong in the realm of means, not ends. Our political and social thinking is prone to what may be called the ‘administrator’s fallacy’, by which I mean the habit of looking upon a society as a systematic whole, of a sort that is thought good if it is pleasant to contemplate as a model of order, a planned organism with parts neatly dove-tailed into each other. But a society does not, or at least should not, exist to satisfy an external survey, but to bring a good life to the individuals who compose it. It is in the individuals, not in the whole, that ultimate value is to be sought. A good society is a means to a good life for those who compose it, not something having a separate kind of excellence on its own account.

People may not see you the way you see yourself. But, that's because they don't want to acknowledge your uniqueness. Jealousy is not disguised.

No peace is possible between the novelist and the agélaste [those who do not laugh]. Never having heard God's laughter, the agélastes are convinced that the truth is obvious, that all men necessarily think the same thing, and that they themselves are exactly what they think they are. But it is precisely in losing the certainty of truth and the unanimous agreement of others that man becomes an individual. The novel is the imaginary paradise of individuals. It is the territory where no one possesses the truth, neither Anna nor Karenin, but where everyone has the right to be understood, both Anna and Karenin.

Originals cost more than imitations.

Romantic literature often presents the individual as somebody caught in a struggle against the state and the market. Nothing could be further from the truth. The state and the market are the mother and father of the individual, and the individual can survive only thanks to them. The market provides us with work, insurance and a pension. If we want to study a profession, the government’s schools are there to teach us. If we want to open a business, the bank loans us money. If we want to build a house, a construction company builds it and the bank gives us a mortgage, in some cases subsidised or insured by the state. If violence flares up, the police protect us. If we are sick for a few days, our health insurance takes care of us. If we are debilitated for months, social security steps in. If we need around-the-clock assistance, we can go to the market and hire a nurse – usually some stranger from the other side of the world who takes care of us with the kind of devotion that we no longer expect from our own children. If we have the means, we can spend our golden years at a senior citizens’ home. The tax authorities treat us as individuals, and do not expect us to pay the neighbours’ taxes. The courts, too, see us as individuals, and never punish us for the crimes of our cousins. Not only adult men, but also women and children, are recognised as individuals. Throughout most of history, women were often seen as the property of family or community. Modern states, on the other hand, see women as individuals, enjoying economic and legal rights independently of their family and community. They may hold their own bank accounts, decide whom to marry, and even choose to divorce or live on their own. But the liberation of the individual comes at a cost. Many of us now bewail the loss of strong families and communities and feel alienated and threatened by the power the impersonal state and market wield over our lives. States and markets composed of alienated individuals can intervene in the lives of their members much more easily than states and markets composed of strong families and communities. When neighbours in a high-rise apartment building cannot even agree on how much to pay their janitor, how can we expect them to resist the state? The deal between states, markets and individuals is an uneasy one. The state and the market disagree about their mutual rights and obligations, and individuals complain that both demand too much and provide too little. In many cases individuals are exploited by markets, and states employ their armies, police forces and bureaucracies to persecute individuals instead of defending them. Yet it is amazing that this deal works at all – however imperfectly. For it breaches countless generations of human social arrangements. Millions of years of evolution have designed us to live and think as community members. Within a mere two centuries we have become alienated individuals. Nothing testifies better to the awesome power of culture.

People define you; analyze you by their own way. They see you; react at you under the best of their perception and cognition. Why people can’t accept anyone’s existence as a distinct entity? Is this due to the lack of good discernment? Or it is the direct underestimation of individuality? Maybe the acceptance of anyone’s intuitive understanding of the eternal conflict between inconsistency and compatibility.

Personal Responsibility is the individual desire to be in charge or in control of an action or situation.

Socialism is not really an option in the material world. There can be no collective ownership of anything materially scarce. One or another faction will assert control in the name of society. Inevitably, the faction will be the most powerful in society -- that is, the state. This is why all attempts to create socialism in scarce goods or services devolve into totalitarian systems of top-down planning.

Societies are mediocre, individuals are excellent.

Sorry” we all say “Sorry” for the wrong things we say and do. But do we always think about the people we love dearly who we say hurtful things to? I don’t think so because if we had think about it sorry wouldn't have become such a popular word today. Sometimes we say so much and act immature as adult. We didn't take the time to realize how much hurt and pain we put that individual in we never took the time to think of the reaction, the feelings and the consequence that we might have to face if what we do turns out to be a matter of life and death.!!!

Success for me hasn't been about individual success. It's about the success of all those young boys and girls who I have the honor of working with.

Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life’s secrets. It’s the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. ‘We are too ego-centered,’ Suzuki tells Cage.’ The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.

That which is good for the society is not necessarily good for the individual. That which is good for the individual is good for the society.

The absolutely alienated individual worships at the altar of an idol, and it makes little difference by what names this idol is known.

The basic idea underlying religion is to create an atmosphere for the spiritual development of the individual.

The Coin of Life example: Say you have a coin with heads on one side and tails on the other side. One side would mean good and the other bad, based on your interpretation or bet of which side of the coin represents a win for you. However, you can't decide the outcome and the coin flips many times throughout your life. Finding balance is flipping the coin in such a way that neither of the sides is of greater importance to you, but if the coin lands on the middle bit, you realize that the space between what you consider good or bad is so small and the probability of landing there is also incredibly small without continuous practice. However, no matter the outcome, you choose to accept the coin as it is, with both sides, and appreciate the importance of both in your life. For the coin of life has meaning and value no matter what side it lands on. It's each individual's choice whether to bet on the outcome or not, but ultimately your coin of life will be spent somehow.

The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.

The Council of Scholars has said that we all know the things which exist and therefore the things which are not known by all do not exist.

The desire for excellence becomes a reality when an individual sets a standard, reach it and surpass it consistently.

The function of the educator is to discover in each individual child the gifts implanted in her by Almighty God and to develop and dedicate them to His service.

The goal of spirituality is total and permanent freedom from psychological sorrows and sufferings. This is only possible when we will stop taking birth as individuals again and again. What makes us an ‘Individual’? The ignorance. What kind of ignorance? Our idea about our self that ‘I am an individual’.

The idea of freedom is complex and it is all-encompassing. It’s the idea that the economy must remain free of government persuasion. It’s the idea that the press must operate without government intrusion. And it’s the idea that the emails and phone records of Americans should remain free from government search and seizure. It’s the idea that parents must be the decision makers in regards to their children's education — not some government bureaucrat. But most importantly, it is the idea that the individual must be free to pursue his or her own happiness free from government dependence and free from government control. Because to be truly free is to be reliant on no one other than the author of our destiny. These are the ideas at the core of the Republican Party, and it is why I am a Republican. So my brothers and sisters of the American community, please join with me today in abandoning the government plantation and the Party of disappointment. So that we may all echo the words of one Republican leader who famously said, "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.

The individual is the collective, the collective is the individual.

The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act—the process of reason—must be performed by each man alone.

The most prevalent form of slavery is being a slave of your own insecurities Or exploiting another's vulnerabilities. Lust, greed and anger are the pitfalls of the short sighted. Long term business is not possible through lust, greed, anger or guile; it is done based on 'sustainable' relationships; And that is possible when happiness is your goal and each individual you transact with, is a 'strong adult Individual'. We need to invest in ourselves to make us one and in others to help them become the same. It IS in my Selfish interest to have strong, adult individuals around!

She was a gypsy, as soon as you unravelled the many layers to her wild spirit she was on her next quest to discover her magic. She was relentless like that, the woman didn't need no body but an open road, a pen and a couple of sunsets.

She was a rule breaker, never settling her fierce spirit for things built of structure.

The most thoroughly and relentlessly damned, banned, excluded, condemned, forbidden, ostracized, ignored, suppressed, repressed, robbed, brutalized and defamed of all 'Damned Things' is the individual human being. The social engineers, statisticians, psychologists, sociologists, market researchers, landlords, bureaucrats, captains of industry, bankers, governors, commissars, kings and presidents are perpetually forcing this 'Damned Thing' into carefully prepared blueprints and perpetually irritated that the 'Damned Thing' will not fit into the slot assigned it. The theologians call it a sinner and try to reform it. The governor calls it a criminal and tries to punish it. The psychologist calls it a neurotic and tries to cure it. Still, the 'Damned Thing' will not fit into their slots.

The ocean stands for God, the sole substance, and individual beings are like waves - which are modes of the sea. Each wave has its own shape that it holds for a certain time, but the wave is not separate from the sea and cannot be conceived to exist independently of it. Of course, this is only a metaphor; unlike an infinite God, an ocean has boundaries, and moreover the image of the sea represents God only in the attributes of extension. But maybe we can also imagine the mind of God - that is to say, the infinite totality of thinking - as like the sea, and the thoughts of finite beings as like waves that arise and then pass away.

The only thing of value on this earth is that each of us is an individual and not a cog in a machine. No man is better than another because of circumstance or fortune, but each important to his own.

The "pathology of normalcy" rarely deteriorates to graver forms of mental illness because society produces the antidote against such deterioration. When pathological processes become socially patterned, they lose their individual character. On the contrary, the sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology and arranged the means to give satisfactions which fit the pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation, in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic.

The poet is individual—he is complete in himself: the others are as good as he; only he sees it, and they do not.

The progress of the world can certainly never come at all save by the modified action of the individual beings who compose the world.

There are no such things as nations, States and societies existing as collective common realities which stand on a higher level than personality and turn it into part of themselves.

There’s no ‘right or wrong’ when we describe what is beautiful and what is not.

There was no one like her on the whole of the planet, no one who had ever lived or ever would. There was not a single other person with her fingerprints, with her memories, with the blood beating in her veins. She was herself, and she was alive right now, despite everything.

There's something I would like to understand. And I don't think anyone can explain it. . . There's your life. You begin it, feeling that it's something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it's like a sacred treasure. Now it's over and it doesn't make any difference to anyone, and it isn't that they are indifferent, it's just that they don't know, they don't know what it means, that treasure of mine, and there's something about it that they should understand. I don't understand it myself, but there's something about it that should be understood by all of us. Only what is it? What?

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

The secret of gestures lays mostly in mutual communication. When an individual rise to the measure of others, effectiveness is not solitary.

The root of liberalism, in a word, is hatred of compulsion, for liberalism has the respect for the individual and his conscience and reason which the employment of coercion necessarily destroys. The liberal has faith in the individual – faith that he can be persuaded by rational means to beliefs compatible with social good.

The time to clean our city of any dirt begins with individual action for collective clean communities.

…the traditional family structure that More supported in her writings enabled women to 'be intelligent, rational, virtuous, and noble creatures, capable of great intellectual and moral achievements. They had the potential for immense influence on their husbands and sons, on their relations, their servants, and the poor.' More held, therefore, … 'the ideal of rational domesticity helped to liberate the individual within a supportive family framework.

The uniform is that which we do not choose, that which is assigned to us; it is the certitude of the universal against the precariousness of the individual. When the values that were once so solid come under challenge and withdraw, heads bowed, he who cannot live without them (without fidelity, family, country, discipline, without love) buttons himself up in the universality of his uniform as if that uniform were the last shred of transcendence that could protect him against the cold of a future in which there will be nothing left to respect.