407 Quotes About Individualism

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am -- not stuck in the middle, but hovering above the entire farcical spectrum, weeping as I behold my fellow man's devotion to political illusion and self-destruction.

Our culture places a very high premium on self-expression, but is relatively disinterested in producing "selves" that are worth expressing.

The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful.

Our focus should be on making the most of our own lives, regardless of whether we start at the bottom or the top- not on envying the advantages and achievements of others.

Instant gratification is no more essential to magical culture than bigotry to religious culture or psychopathy to science, and yet times of magical revival do go hand in hand with a rise in individualism

How can I give up stalking when I have a family to feed? Get a job? I don't want to work for you, your work makes me puke, do you understand? This is the way I figure it: if a man works with you, he is always working for one of you, he is a slave and nothing else. And I always wanted to be myself, on my own, so that I could spit at you all, at your boredom and despair.

An individual does not have an identity except in its relation to a series of causes and effects which are determined by other individuals, which themselves have no identity except in their relation to a series of causes and effects, and so on ad infinitum...

The doctrine of spontaneous naturalism of Renaissance comes from the same source as the theory that the fight against the spirit of authority and hierarchy, the ideal of freedom of thought and freedom of conscience, the emancipation of the individual and the principle of democracy are achievements of fifteenth century. In all this light of the modern age is contrasted with the darkness of the Middle Ages.

But once I could look back on it in a calmer frame of mind, it struck me that his motive was surely not so simple and straightforward. Had it resulted from a fatal collision between reality and ideals? Perhaps—but this was still not quite it. Eventually, I began to wonder whether it was not the same unbearable loneliness that I now felt that had brought K to his decision.