Quotes about individual
page 8

“The Lord's way builds individual self esteem and develops and heals the dignity of the individual, whereas the world's way depresses the individual's view of himself and causes deep resentment”

Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

World, Way

“It's hard to get along with people. As much as you try to like them and accept them as individuals, it becomes difficult because they keep getting out of line and wasting your time.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

People, Time

“the identity of an individual is essentially a function of her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

Source: The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity

“I am what I am: an individual, unique and different, with a lineal history of an ancestral promptings and urgings, a history of dreams, desires, and of special experiences, of all of which I am the sum total.”

Charlie Chaplin book My Autobiography

Source: My Autobiography (p. 271 Simon and Schuster 1964 edition)

Dreams, History

“And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Epilogue.
Source: Invisible Man (1952)

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”

Alyson Nöel book Dark Flame

Source: Dark Flame

Life

“Public libraries have been a mainstay of my life. They represent an individual's right to acquire knowledge; they are the sinews that bind civilized societies the world over. Without libraries, I would be a pauper, intellectually and spiritually.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

Life, World, Knowledge

“The individual's duty is to do what he wants to do, to think whatever he likes, to be accountable to no one but himself, to challenge every idea and every person.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Age of Reason

Source: The Age of Reason

Idea, Thinking, Personality

“I'm for the individual as opposed to the corporation. The way it is the individual is the underdog, and with all the things a corporation has going for them the individual comes out banged on her head. The artist is nothing. It's really tragic.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Way

“The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again play a decisive role in many suicides”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

Fear, Decision, Suicide

“When one individual comes into intimate contact with another, she—or he, of course, as the case may be—must almost inevitably receive or inflict suffering.”

Aldous Huxley book Crome Yellow

Source: Crome Yellow

Suffering

“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 (1936) Novelist

Life, World, Change

“Being a doctor at Johns Hopkins does not make me any better in God's sight than the individual who has not had the opportunity to gain such an education but who still works hard.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

God, Education

“Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important, in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

1836
Notebooks, The American Notebooks (1835 - 1853)

World

“The life of the individual has meaning only insofar as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful. Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate.”

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

Life, Beauty

“The greatest question of our time is not communism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, not even the East vs. the West; it is whether men can bear to live without God.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Men, God, Communication, Question

“Ole Golly: You know what? You're an individual, and that makes people nervous. And it's gonna keep making people nervous for the rest of your life.”

Louise Fitzhugh (1928–1974) American children's writer

Life, People

“Wold domination is exhausting and cliche. People ought to just focus on being individual responsible citizens of the earth instead of assholes.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

People

“What obsession do men have for destruction and murder? Who do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled 'enemy?”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Men, Heart

“Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Family

“I early learned that it is a hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him, and that this is more often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy actions performed than by calling attention alone to all the evil done.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Source: Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

Learning, Evil

“The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

“Remember also that the smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

Ayn Rand book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

“Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't the will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never cease to exist.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Nature

“I think when we make choices—for
each choice is individual of the choices we have made before—we must examine not
only our reasons for making them but what result they will have, and whether good people will be hurt by our decisions.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

People, Thinking, Decision, Hurt

“Ironically enough, the only people who can hold up indefinitely under the stress of modern war are psychotics. Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited

War, People

“Individual words, sounds, squiggles on paper with no meanings other than those with which our imagination can clothe them.”

Jasper Fforde book The Eyre Affair

Source: The Eyre Affair

Imagination, Clothes

“Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Fear

“If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

People, Law, Nature

“You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of danger security for happiness.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Change, Selfishness, Happiness

“The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation and Empire

Source: Foundation and Empire

Law, Error, History

“We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentment and mortality.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Fear, Thinking

“All a person can do in this life is gather about him his integrity, his imagination, and his individuality – and with these ever with him, out front and in sharp focus, leap into the dance of experience.”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Life, Imagination, Dance, Personality

“Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Parting

“… while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Sign of the Four

Source: The Sign of Four

Mathematics

“The frightened individual seeks for somebody or something to tie his self
to; he cannot bear to be his own individual self any longer,
and he tries frantically to get rid of it and to feel security again by the elimination of this burden:
the self.”

Erich Fromm book Escape from Freedom

Source: Escape from Freedom

Feeling

“Books turn people into isolated individuals, and once that's happened, the road only grows rockier. Books wire you to want to be Steve McQueen, but the world wants you to be SMcQ23667bot@hotmail. com.”

Douglas Coupland book Generation A

Source: Generation A

People, Books, World

“I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. They are the real heroes, and so are the families and friends who have stood by them.”

Christopher Reeve (1952–2004) actor, director, producer, screenwriter

Still Me (1999); also quoted at the Christopher Reeve Foundation http://www.christopherreeve.org/site/c.geIMLPOpGjF/b.1097025/k.6FF5/Christopher_and_Dana_Reeve.htm <br class="br">Context: When the first Superman movie came out, I gave dozens of interviews to promote it. The most frequent question was: What is a hero? My answer was that a hero is someone who commits a courageous action without considering the consequences. Now my definition is completely different. I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. They are the real heroes, and so are the families and friends who have stood by them.

Family, Thinking, Perseverance

“I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loath and despise the groups they identify or belong to.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Love

“Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

“So you see, Good and Evil have the same face; it all depends on when they cross the path of each individual human being.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Evil, Dependency

“You know you've reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.”

Sarah Vowell book Assassination Vacation

Source: Assassination Vacation (2005), p. 144

“As one individual changes, the system changes.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Change

“I have assumed the role of Antichrist; I am the Nineties voice of individuality and people tend to associate anyone who looks and behaves differently with illegal or immoral activity…”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

People

“Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of great distress.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body, p 49

Life, Law, Beauty, Time

“The revolution is made through human beings, but individuals must forge their revolutionary spirit day by day”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

“Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path.”

Salman Rushdie book The Enchantress of Florence

Source: The Enchantress of Florence

Lie, Error

“The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in a single, solitary, even humble individual. For it is within the soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Soul, History, Evil, Change

“We don't need a law against McDonald's or a law against slaughterhouse abuse--we ask for too much salvation by legislation. All we need to do is empower individuals with the right philosophy and the right information to opt out en masse.”

Joel Salatin (1957) American environmentalist

Law

“I like people who have a sense of individuality. I love expression and anything awkward and imperfect, because that’s natural and that’s real.”

Marc Jacobs (1963) American fashion designer

Love, People, Nature, Sense

“There's a rebel lying deep in my soul. Anytime anybody tells me the trend is such and such, I go the opposite direction. I hate the idea of trends. I hate imitation; I have a reverence for individuality.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

Source: Wild Open Spaces: Why We Love Westerns

Hate, Soul, Lying, Idea

“So somehow the "isness" of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals.”

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

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Context: There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Ovid, the Latin poet, "I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do." There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Plato that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions. There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Goethe, "There is enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue." There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Apostle Paul, "I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do." So somehow the "isness" of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals. The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it. And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls "the image of God," you begin to love him in spite of. No matter what he does, you see God’s image there. There is an element of goodness that he can never sluff off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.

Nature, Evil

“Ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore -- "I'm easy; I'll eat anything" -- can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

Way, Appearance

“Those in whom the Spirit comes to live are God's new Temple. They are, individually and corporately, places where heaven and earth meet.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

Source: Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense

God

“Jesus tends to his people individually. He personally sees to our needs. We all receive Jesus' touch. We experience his care.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Experiencing the Heart of Jesus: Knowing His Heart, Feeling His Love

People, Personality

“The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

Source: Desert Solitaire

Love, Life, Flowers, Freedom

“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law”

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

Law, Penalty, Communication, Reality

“Our vanity makes us exaggerate the importance of human life; the individual is nothing; Nature cares only for the species.”

Aldous Huxley book Point Counter Point

Source: Point Counter Point

Life, Nature

“Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.” “That’s a lie.” “No. It’s just a half truth. You can worry about the other half after we win this war.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

War, Truth, Lie, Help

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

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

“This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Variant: And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.
Source: East of Eden (1952)
Context: And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.
Context: Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in art, in music, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

World, Freedom, Fight

“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 book Lady Audley's Secret

Source: Lady Audley's Secret

World, Personality

“Once lay down the rule that the job comes first and you throw that job open to every individual, man or woman, fat or thin, tall or short, ugly or beautiful, who is able to do that job better than the rest of the world.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Source: Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

World, Beauty

“We're all born with selfish desires, so we can all relate to those feelings in others. But kindness is something made individually by each person… so it's easy to misunderstand when others are trying to be kind to you.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Source: Fruits Basket Ultimate Edition, Vol. 3

Feeling, Personality, Selfishness

“I wonder whether there is such a thing as a sense of individuality. Is it all a facade, covering a deep need to belong? Are we simply pack animals desperately trying to pretend we are not?”

Rabih Alameddine (1959) Lebanese-American painter and writer.

Source: I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

Sense, Animals

“A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed cormulas about good and evil.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

Life, Sense, Evil

“Relationships are never static. They have to evolve over time as the individuals in them change.”

Sherryl Woods (1944) American writer

Source: Driftwood Cottage

Change, Time

“I believe that the community - in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures - is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms. (pg. 146, Health is Membership)”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

Health, Communication, Sense

“A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Life

“The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die - although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.”

Erich Fromm The Sane Society

Source: The Sane Society

Life, Fate, Birth

“There is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.”

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

Source: The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Courage, Freedom, Suffering

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. … We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

Wilderness Letter http://wilderness.org/bios/former-council-members/wallace-stegner (1960) <br class="br">Source: The Sound of Mountain Water

People, Health, Books, World

“The degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.”

Erving Goffman book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Source: 1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 229

“But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.”

Victor Hugo book The Last Day of a Condemned Man

Source: The Last Day of a Condemned Man

God

“The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 9
Context: There is survival and survival, the historian learns to his grief. The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.
Context: My dear and unfortunate successor:
I shall conclude my account as rapidly as possible, since you must draw from it vital information if we are both to — ah, to survive, at least, and to survive in a state of goodness and mercy. There is survival and survival, the historian learns to his grief. The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.

Effort

“Real leaders are people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

People, Fear, Help, Selfishness

“I often warn people: "Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, 'There is no "I" in team.' What you should tell them is, 'Maybe not. But there is an "I" in independence, individuality and integrity.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

People, Way

“Every individual has a unique contribution.”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

“Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction. It is an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself, with the Law of his being.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

Law, Suffering

“The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1

Life

“A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind.”

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

1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.

Love, Reality, Loyalty

“I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”

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

Reply to a letter sent to him on 17 July 1953 p. 39
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

“They have accepted me as an individual, as a personality, as an entity. I belong! I am important! I am somebody!”

Beatrice Sparks (1917–2012) American writer

Source: Go Ask Alice

Personality

“The freedom of speech of private individuals includes the right to not agree, not to listen, and not to finance one's own antagonists.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

Freedom

“we are unique individuals with unique experiences”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

“In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Men

“I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That this is the only way to grow together, instead of apart.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Heart of the Matter

Life, Marriage, Way, Thinking

“Reading those books is all he does these days. I think he’s even read some of them. What kind of disturbed individual would read the same book twice, I ask you?”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Last Stand of Dead Men

Books, Thinking, Reading

“Love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender. I have fallen for individuals.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Variant: In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender. I have fallen for individuals.
Source: Every Day

Love

“If suffering like hers had any use, she reasoned, it was not to the sufferer. The only way that an individual's pain gained meaning was through its communication to others.”

Diane Wood Middlebrook (1939–2007) biographer

Source: Anne Sexton: A Biography

Pain, Way, Communication, Suffering

“As regards intellectual work it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realm of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual, working in solitude.”

Sigmund Freud Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

Source: Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

Problem, Decision, Solitude

“In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love for a gender. I have fallen for individuals. I know this is hard for people to do, but I don’t understand why it’s so hard, when it’s so obvious.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day