“A Distinguished Individual's Pursuits are Within Themselves;

Where as, a Small Insignificant Individual Pursues is in Others.”

—  Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Last update May 14, 2022. History

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Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“It is individuality which is the original and eternal within man; personality doesn’t matter so much. To pursue the education and development of this individuality as one’s highest vocation would be a divine egoism.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Grade die Individualität ist das Ursprüngliche und Ewige im Menschen; an der Personalität ist so viel nicht gelegen. Die Bildung und Entwicklung dieser Individualität als höchsten Beruf zu treiben, wäre ein göttlicher Egoismus.
“Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) # 60

Herbert Spencer photo

“The pursuit of individual happiness within those limits prescribed by social conditions, is the first requisite to the attainment of the greatest general happiness.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Ethics (New York:1915), § 70, pp. 190-191
The Principles of Ethics (1897), Part I: The Data of Ethics

Harry V. Jaffa photo

“The "pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence didn't mean radical individualism. It meant the pursuit of virtue.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Interview with Peter Robinson (2009)

Ayn Rand photo

“Any group or “collective,” large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“There might be something within you that arouses the tragic hate response in the other individual.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Context: How do you go about loving your enemies? I think the first thing is this: In order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing self. And I’m sure that seems strange to you, that I start out telling you this morning that you love your enemies by beginning with a look at self. It seems to me that that is the first and foremost way to come to an adequate discovery to the how of this situation. … some people aren’t going to like you. They’re going to dislike you, not because of something that you’ve done to them, but because of various jealous reactions and other reactions that are so prevalent in human nature. But after looking at these things and admitting these things, we must face the fact that an individual might dislike us because of something that we’ve done deep down in the past, some personality attribute that we possess, something that we’ve done deep down in the past and we’ve forgotten about it; but it was that something that aroused the hate response within the individual. That is why I say, begin with yourself. There might be something within you that arouses the tragic hate response in the other individual.

Carl von Clausewitz photo

“Where execution is dominant, as it is in the individual events of a war whether great or small, then intellectual factors are reduced to a minimum.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 3

Rollo May photo

“When people feel their insignificance as individual persons, they also suffer an undermining of their sense of human responsibility.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Psychology and the Human Dilemma (1967), p. 31

“[Freud’s] concepts are radical in their pursuit of society where it allegedly does not exist: in the privacy of the individual. Freud undid the primal bourgeois distinction between private and public, the individual and society. … Freud exposed the lie that subject was inviolate; he showed that at every point is was violated.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 26

Robert Owen photo

“The lowest stage of humanity is experienced when the individual must labour for a small pittance of wages from others.”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

Paper Dedicated to the Governments of Great Britain, Austria, Russia, France, Prussia and the United States of America (1841).

Peter Kreeft photo

“Love unifies by individuating and individuates by unifying. At what moment do lovers come into the most perfect possession of themselves as individuals if not when they are most lost in each other? Self, is given up, but "he who loses his self will find it."”

Peter Kreeft (1937) American philosopher

Matthew 16:25
Source: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven … But Never Dreamed of Asking (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), p. 74

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