“It is the individual only who is timeless.”

— Eric Hoffer

Section 183
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
Context: It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations — past and present — are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hunger, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millennia. Thus, we are up against the paradox that the individual who is more complex, unpredictable, and mysterious than any communal entity is the one nearest to our understanding; so near that even the interval of millennia cannot weaken our feeling of kinship. If in some manner the voice of an individual reaches us from the remotest distance of time, it is a timeless voice speaking about ourselves.

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Eric Hoffer 240

American philosopher 1898–1983

Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) American academic

Essays on Liberty (1954), Essays on Liberty https://books.google.com/books?id=SugpAQAAMAAJ&dq=There+is+really+nothing+that+can+be+done+except+by+an+individual.+Only+individuals+can+learn.+Only+individuals+can+think+creatively.+Only+individuals+can+cooperate.+Only+individuals+can+combat+statism.&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22There+is+really+nothing+that+can+be+done+except+by+an+individual.+Only+individuals+can+learn.+Only+individuals+can+think+creatively.+Only+individuals+can+cooperate.+Only+individuals+can+combat+statism.%22

“The only indication of an individual vision is an individual style”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

The Artist Speaks (1951)
Context: The only indication of an individual vision is an individual style: "What I seek above all in a picture is a man and not a picture" – Zola

“Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“My heroes are those people who want to be individuals but are being forced to be cogs again. In an Empire there are only cogs.”

Anna Politkovskaya (1958–2006) Russian journalist

As quoted in Anna Politkovskaya: Putin, poison and my struggle for freedom https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/anna-politkovskaya-putin-poison-and-my-struggle-for-freedom-535250.html (15 October 2004), The Independent.

“Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken the wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for his own sake.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 38
Context: Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken the wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for his own sake. What purports to be art begins to looks like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalised action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in an artistic creation the personality does not assert itself it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always the servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of the self can only be expressed in sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting about this, and at the same time, inevitably, losing all sense of human calling.

“Religion is immediate self-consciousness. It liberates the individual from the determinative forces of society. … It is effective only in individuals, where "in-dividuals" means whose who are undivided, that is, who are liberated from the psychological, social, and logical consequences of the division of labor in society and who actually live concretely and historically, unfettered by abstract norms.”

Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt (1928–2002) German theologian

"Socialism in the Theology of Karl Barth"

“With God there are only individuals.”

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913–1994) Colombian writer and philosopher

Escolios a un Texto Implicito (1977), Volume One

“It is important to foster individuality, for only the individual can produce the new ideas.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“Groups are grammatical fictions; only individuals exist, and each individual is different.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

The Robert Anton Wilson Website - RAW Thoughts, Robert Anton Wilson, 2016-06-03 http://www.rawilson.com/thoughts.html,

“Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness. … Ego-centeredness is not individuality at all.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

Dialogue with Renée Weber, first published in the journal Re-vision (1983); later published in Dialogues with Scientists and Sages : The Search for Unity (1986) by Renée Weber, p. 30
Context: The point about dialectic is the ultimate identity of the universal and the individual. The individual is universal and the universal is the individual. The word "individual" means undivided, so we could say that very few individuals have ever existed. We could call them dividuals. Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.... Ego-centeredness is not individuality at all.

“It is the individual only who is timeless.”

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Eric Hoffer 240

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