407 Quotes About Individualism

Herder put forward the idea that each of us has an original way of being human. Each person has his or her own "measure" is his way of putting it. This idea has entered very deep into modern consciousness. It is also new. Before the late eighteenth century no one thought that the differences between human beings had this kind of moral significance.

What I was suddenly aware of was the importance of their being whatever each of them was---cocky and contemptuous, or bothered and beaten---as long as it was something they'd come to in their own way: the importance of being human, in fact. The peace and harmony Uncle Ian and the others claimed to be handing out in fact was death, because without being yourself, an individual, you weren't really alive.

Nationality was the most pernicious, depersonalizing, homogenizing label that could ever be attached to the human individual.

Collective will supplants individual whim

...for recent sociologists the dark secret at the heart of modern individualism is its failure as a mode of life...

Here's what I don't get: when you're growing up, you get told that America's all about the individual, built on individualism, you get to be who you want to be, etc. But it only goes so far.You get out of school and you're supposed to go back to being a good little girl and find your job and fit in and follow the rules and it all makes me want to...

pp. 6-7:I want America to return to the ideal of treating people as individuals, so I have to write a book that treats Americans as groups. But there’s no way around it. Those of us who want to defend the American creed have been unwilling to say openly that races have significant group differences. Since we have been unwilling to say that, we have been defenseless against claims that racism is to blame for unequal outcomes. What else could it be? We have been afraid to answer candidly.

The captivity to individualism in the West leads many to reject the possibility of institutions and systems inflicting social harm that requires a social response.

In today’s world, the cult of the individual is the new religion. No one is allowed to contradict the individual, to tell him he’s wrong, a waste of space, a liability, a degenerate. We have to pretend that all individuals – no matter how vile – are sacred. We are not allowed to take any action against them, to reform them, correct them, educate them. After all, everyone has their own truth, so everyone is automatically right.