Individuality Quotes

“To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is.”
― C.G. Jung

“I am not plain, or average or - God forbid - vanilla. I am peanut butter rocky road with multicolored sprinkles, hot fudge and a cherry on top.”
― Wendy Mass, Every Soul a Star

“I believe in going with the flow. I don't believe in fighting against the flow. You ride on your river and you go with the tides and the flow. But it has to be your river, not someone else's. Everyone has their own river, and you don't need to swim,float,sail on their's, but you need to be in your own river and you need to go with it. And I don't believe in fighting the wind. You go and you fly with your wind. Let everyone else catch their own gusts of wind and let them fly with their own gusts of wind, and you go and you fly with yours.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty

“Why would I want to fit in?”
― Carrie Jones, Need

“I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.”
― John Lennon

“If you are different from the rest of the flock, they bite you”
― Vincent O'Sullivan, The next room

“Forming grammatically correct sentences is for the normal individual the prerequisite for any submission to social laws. No one is supposed to be ignorant of grammaticality; those who are belong in special institutions. The unity of language is fundamentally political.”
― Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

“The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, or George or Bill Bailey -
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.”
― T.S. Eliot, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

“Life is neither static nor unchanging. With no individuality, there can be no change, no adaptation and, in an inherently changing world, any species unable to adapt is also doomed.”
― Jean M. Auel

“Any fool can do something cool and look cool, but it takes skill to make something uncool cool again.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“The unique must be fulfilled.”
― Martha Graham

“The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.”
― John Maynard Keynes

“But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope.”
― Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“Creating individuality, which creates and protects others' individualities is good.”
― Zaman Ali, MORALITY An Individual Dilemma

“If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively.”
― Mel Brooks

“You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fence and a future office building. Damage has been done to your city. You say, ''It happened overnight.'' But of course it didn't. Your pizza parlor, his shoeshine stand, her hat store: when they were here, we neglected them. For all you know, the place closed down moments after the last time you walked out the door. (Ten months ago? Six years? Fifteen? You can't remember, can you?) And there have been five stores in that spot before the travel agency. Five different neighborhoods coming and going between then and now, other people's other cities. Or 15, 25, 100 neighborhoods. Thousands of people pass that storefront every day, each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York

“Do the other kids make fun of you? For how you talk?'
'Sometimes.'
'So why don't you do something about it? You could learn to talk differently, you know.'
But this is my voice. How would you be able to tell when I was talking?”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“Believe it or not, some of us have piercings and tattoos and dye our hair because we think it looks pretty, not for any deep sociological reason. This isn't an act of protest against cultural or social repression. It's not a grand, deliberately defiant gesture against capitalists or feminists or any other social group. It's not even the fashion equivalent to sticking two fingers up at the world. The boring truth of it, Gabriel, is that I don't dress like this to hurt my parents or draw attention to myself or make a statement. I just do it because I think it looks nice. Disappointed?”
― Alex Bell, The Ninth Circle

“To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world is almost a palpable movement. To enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are diregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“It kills me how these days everyone has clinical justification for their strangeness.”
― Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado

“The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.”
― Sigmund Freud

“Be yourself. Don't worry about what other people are thinking of you.”
― Phil Lester

“When we learn to speak, we learn to translate.”
― Octavio Paz

“People say of me, 'She's peculiar.' They do not understand me. If they did they would say so oftener and with emphasis.”
― Mary MacLane, The Story of Mary Maclane

“Taking into account the public's regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.”
― Janeane Garofalo, Feel This Book: An Essential Guide to Self-Empowerment, Spiritual Supremacy, and Sexual Satisfaction

“I hate the thought of her being forced into a box that doesn't fit her. Of having her wings cut off, her sight blinded, her hearing muted, her voice stilled.”
― Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot

“Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-contained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no colour from the outer world.”
― Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret

“It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

“I want you to stop being subhuman and become 'yourself'. 'Yourself,' I say. Not the newspaper you read, not your vicious neighbor's opinion, but 'yourself.' I know, and you don't, what you really are deep down. Deep down, you are what a deer, your God, your poet, or your philosopher is. But you think you're a member of the VFW, your bowling club, or the Ku Klux Klan, and because you think so, you behave as you do. This too was told you long ago, by Heinrich Mann in Germany, by Upton Sinclair and John Dos Passos in the United States. But you recognized neither Mann nor Sinclair. You recognize only the heavyweight champion and Al Capone. If given your choice between a library and a fight, you'll undoubtedly go to the fight.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!