“It is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people… Think of things in themselves.”
Source: A Room of One's Own
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Virginia Woolf 382
English writer 1882–1941Related quotes
Moral Influence
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VI - Mind and Matter
“What is more important in a library than anything else — is the fact that it exists.”
"The Premise Of Meaning" in American Scholar (5 June 1972)
Variant: The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel, are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.
“The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.”
Le vrai moyen d'être trompé, c'est de se croire plus fin que les autres.
Maxim 127.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
As quoted in "WATCH: 'Fascinating' video of Mugabe talking 'non-racialism' like Mandela goes viral on social media" https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/watch-fascinating-video-of-mugabe-talking-non-racialism-like-mandela-20170916 (16 September 2017), News24, South Africa
2010s
“I think I think harder, think more than other people do, than other scientists.”
Interview at Big Sur, California http://web.archive.org/web/20101212203431/http://achievement.org/autodoc/page/pau0int-3 (11 November 1990).
1990s
Context: I've been asked from time to time, "How does it happen that you have made so many discoveries? Are you smarter than other scientists?" And my answer has been that I am sure that I am not smarter than other scientists. I don't have any precise evaluation of my IQ, but to the extent that psychologists have said that my IQ is about 160, I recognize that there are one hundred thousand or more people in the United States that have IQs higher than that. So I have said that I think I think harder, think more than other people do, than other scientists. That is, for years, almost all of my thinking was about science and scientific problems that I was interested in.
“The thing we must do intensely is be human together. People are more important than things.”
"Introduction" to New World or No World (1970)<!-- an anthology of environmental writing -->
General sources
Context: The thing we must do intensely is be human together. People are more important than things. We must get together. The best thing humans can have going for them is each other. We have each other. We must reject everything which humiliates us. Humans are not objects of consumption. We must develop an absolute priority of humans ahead of profit — any humans ahead of any profit. Then we will survive. … Together.
Source: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
Versus (1949), Possessions are Nine Points of Conversation
Variant: Some people, and it doesn't matter whether they are paupers or millionaires,
Think that anything they have is the best in the world just because it is theirs.