Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Individuality

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
Joseph Campbell (1904–87) American Mythologist, Writer, Lecturer

Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist

We need not be afraid to touch, to feel, to show emotion. The easiest thing in the world is to be what you are, what you feel. The hardest thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.
Leo Buscaglia (1924–98) American Motivational Speaker

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.
Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet

It was perhaps ordained by Providence, to hinder us from tyrannizing over one another, that no individual should be of so much importance as to cause, by his retirement or death, any chasm in the world.
Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist

The epoch of individuality is concluded, and it is the duty of reformers to initiate the epoch of association. Collective man is omnipotent upon the earth he treads.
Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72) Italian Patriot, Political Leader

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
Karl Marx (1818–1883) German Philosopher, Economist

Partake of some of life’s sweet pleasures. And yes, get comfortable with yourself.
Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality

Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.
Remy de Gourmont (1858–1915) French Critic, Novelist

Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles. Why should we all dress after the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows twice alike.
Lydia Maria Child (1802–80) American Abolitionist, Writer

If mankind had not embedded itself, with the momentum of centuries and the passion of habit, in the id
Soren Kierkegaard (1813–55) Danish Philosopher, Theologian

Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to the citizen as much freedom of action and of being, as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American Novelist

Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
John Stuart Mill (1806–73) English Philosopher, Economist

I am interested only in the relations of a people to the rearing of the individual man, and among the Greeks the conditions were unusually favourable for the development of the individual; not by any means owing to the goodness of the people, but because of the struggles of their evil instincts.With the help of favourable measures great individuals might be reared who would be both different from and higher than those who heretofore have owed their existence to mere chance. Here we may still be hopeful: in the rearing of exceptional men.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher

Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do—can love things that no one else can love. We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music. You know what to do.
Barbara Sher (1935–2020) American Career Coach

Never Forget!- The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer

What is wanted—whether this is admitted or not—is nothing less than a fundamental remolding, indeed weakening and abolition of the individual: one never tires of enumerating and indicating all that is evil and inimical, prodigal, costly, extravagant in the form individual existence has assumed hitherto, one hopes to manage more cheaply, more safely, more equitably, more uniformly if there exist only large bodies and their members.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer

By measuring individual human worth, the novelist reveals the full enormity of the State’s crime when it sets out to crush that individuality.
Ian McEwan British Novelist, Short-Story Writer

Since each person, as an individual, is the not-being of the other, it is never possible to eliminate non-understanding completely.
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) German Theologian, Philosopher

I’m black; I don’t feel burdened by it and I don’t think it is a huge responsibility. It’s part of who I am. It does not define me.
Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality

Be content to be what you are, and prefer nothing to it, and do not fear or wish for your last day.
Martial (40–104) Ancient Roman Latin Poet

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist

I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.
Muriel Strode (1875–1964) American Author, Businesswoman

Obscenity is our name for the uneasiness which upsets the physical state associated with self-possession, with the possession of a recognized and stable individuality.
Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French Essayist, Intellectual

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer

My misfortune is doubly painful to me because it will result in my being misunderstood. For me there can be no recreation in the company of others, no intelligent conversation, no exchange of information with peers; only the most pressing needs can make me venture into society. I am obliged to live like an outcast.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Composer, Musician

Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.
David Bohm (1917–92) American Theoretical Physicist

The nail that sticks up will be hammered down.
Japanese Proverb

The great decisions of human life usually have far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no universal recipe for living. Each of us carries his own life-form within him—an irrational form which no other can outbid.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) Swiss Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher

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