999 Quotes About Individuality

The power of the individual is as powerful as the universe is infinite.

Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.

Our lives are without reason, nothing outside the individuality.

Individualization does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself.

For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything beside the State must be taken from him.

It is the individual's task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities . . . interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible. . . .

The State is concentric, but the individual is eccentric.

There are occasions on which it is noble to dare to stand alone. To be pious among infidels, to be disinterested in a time of general venality, to lead a life of virtue and reason in the midst of sensualists, is a proof of a mind intent on nobler things than the praise or blame of men, of a soul fixed in the contemplation of the highest good, and superiour to the tyranny of custom and example.

Most of us can learn to live in perfect comfort on higher levels of power. Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call forth. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. It is evident that our organism has stored-up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon - deeper and deeper strata of explosible material, ready for use by anyone who probes so deep. The human individual usually lives far within his limits.