Individuality Quotes

“The world is not ready for some people when they show up, but that shouldn't stop anyone.”
― Ashly Lorenzana

“The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.”
― Hugh MacLeod

“I cannot say this too strongly: Do not compare yourselves to others. Be true to who you are, and continue to learn with all your might.”
― Daisaku Ikeda, Discussions on Youth

“She might be without country, without nation, but inside her there was still a being that could exist and be free, that could simply say I am without adding a this, or a that, without saying I am Indian, Guyanese, English, or anything else in the world.”
― Sharon Maas, Of Marriageable Age

“I'm an oddity of one, my strangeness too complicated to explain or share.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“I was flipping channels, watching this cheerleading program on MTV. They took a field hockey girl and “transformed” her into a cheerleader by the end of the show. I was just wondering: what if she liked field hockey better?”
― Jess C Scott, EyeLeash: A Blog Novel

“To be an outlaw you must first have a base in law to reject and get out of, I never had such a base. I never had a place I could call home that meant any more than a key to a house, apartment or hotel room. … Am I alien? Alien from what exactly? Perhaps my home is my dream city, more real than my waking life precisely because it has no relation to waking life…”
― William S. Burroughs

“By ring-fencing a time budget for a momentous ‘breathing space’ in the flurry of our life, we may encounter ourselves and take the time to fill the gaps in the framework of our individuality so as to reconcile the qualities of our personality. ( "What after bowling alone?”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Whatever does not pretend at all has style enough.”
― Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons

“It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.”
― Eric Hoffer

“Have you ever played chess, Kitty?”
I eyed her. What did a board game have to do with this? “Not really.”
“You and I should play sometime. I think you would like it,” she said. “It’s a game of strategy, mostly. The strong pieces are in the back row, while the weak pieces—the pawns—are all in the front, ready to take the brunt of the attack. Because of their limited movement and vulnerability, most people underestimate them and only use them to protect the more powerful pieces. But when I play, I protect my pawns.”
“Why?” I said, not entirely sure where this conversation was going. “If they’re weak, then what’s the point?”
“They may be weak when the game begins, but their potential is remarkable. Most of the time, they’ll be taken by the other side and held captive until the end of the game. But if you’re careful—if you keep your eyes open and pay attention to what your opponent is doing, if you protect your pawns and they reach the other side of the board, do you know what happens then?”
I shook my head, and she smiled.
“Your pawn becomes a queen.” She touched my cheek, her fingers cold as ice. “Because they kept moving forward and triumphed against impossible odds, they become the most powerful piece in the game. Never forget that, all right? Never forget the potential one solitary pawn has to change the entire game.”
― Aimee Carter, Pawn

“Joining a sub-culture, any sub-culture, for whatever reason, is as I see it never a legitimate self-expression. It is always a result of sheep mentality; a wish to belong somewhere.”
― Varg Vikernes

“Human groupings have one main purpose: to assert everyone’s right to be different, to be special, to think, feel and live in his or her own way. People join together in order to win or defend this right. But this is where a terrible, fateful error is born: the belief that these groupings in the name of a race, a God, a party or a State are the very purpose of life and not simply a means to an end. No! The only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and in his right to these peculiarities.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“The internet: always proving that you're not quite as special as you suspected.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“He thought: How difficult it is to explain yourself to yourself. Sometimes there only is, and no knowing.”
― Aidan Chambers, Postcards from No Man's Land

“There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else's life. But this notion gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me.”
― Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism

“You have two choices in life...Choice one is to be the same and be like everyone else...Choice two is to be yourself and be a difference-maker.”
― Jazlyn Roehl

“It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put there faith there and let the smaller insecurities take care of themselves. But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potential moral units- because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves anymore, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coat-tails.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“A fair and just society offers equality of opportunity to all. But it cannot promise, and should not try to enforce, sameness.”
― Christina Hoff Sommers

“A thorough inspection of someone you believed to be loveable will send you back into your shell if all you saw in their life was all bullshit.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“I just never let anything bother me, man. I know myself really well. Nobody's opinion of me can shake my opinion of myself.”
― Ruben Studdard

“Most people believe it is only by constraint they can get any good out of themselves, and so they live in a state of psychological distortion. It is his own self that each of them is most afraid of resembling. Each of them sets up a pattern and imitates it; he doesn't even choose the pattern he imitates: he accepts a pattern that has been chosen for him. And yet I verily believe there are other things to be read in man. But people don't dare to - they don't dare to turn the page. Laws of imitation! Laws of fear, I call them. The fear of finding oneself alone - that is what they suffer from - and so they don't find themselves at all. I detest such moral agoraphobia - the most odious cowardice I call it. Why, one always has to be alone to invent anything - but they don't want to invent anything. The part in each of us that we feel is different from other people is just the part that is rare, the part that makes our special value - and that is the very thing people try to suppress. They go on imitating. And yet they think they love life.”
― André Gide, The Immoralist

“The time when you should most of all withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.”
― Epicurus

“[...] the diversity of our opinions, consequently, does not arise from some being endowed with a larger share of reason than others, but solely from this, that we conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects. For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellences, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy

“Once a man strays out of the common herd, he's more likely to meet wolves in the thickets than angels.”
― Walter de la Mare, The Return

“We get swallowed up by the illusion that unless we can find a place to belong, we are going to be all alone in the world.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: the Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

“Who are you?'
I didn't understand the question.
I'm Uri', he said. 'What's your name?'
I gave him my name. 'Stopthief.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Milkweed

“My mother finally took me to a child psychologist, who knew exactly what I was, but she just couldn’t accept it and kept trying to tell my folks I was reading their body language and was very observant, so I had good reason to imagine I heard people’s thoughts. Of course, she couldn’t admit I was literally hearing people’s thoughts because that just didn’t fit into her world.”
― Charlaine Harris, Dead Until Dark

“I would rather die an individual than live my life as a clone.”
― Cristina Marrero

“To exist is to stand out, away from the background," The Preacher said. "You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune