Quotes about Individualism

The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.

When people speak in the same tone of voice about a "personal deodorant," a "personal trainer," and a "personal Savior," I suspect that what they really mean is "private." I've got mine; too bad about you. But Christianity, like its ancestor Judaism, is inescapably communal.

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.

Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.

One sees in Latin America, and also elsewhere, among many Catholics a certain schizophrenia between individual and public morality.

At least I had frost on my nose, boots on my feet, and protest in my mouth.

I've got my full rucksack pack and it's spring, I'm going to go Southwest to the dry land, to the long lone land of Texas and Chihuahua and the gay streets of Mexico night, music coming out of doors, girls, wine, weed, wild hats, viva! What does it matter? Like the ants that have nothing to do but dig all day, I have nothing to do but what I want and be kind and remain nevertheless uninfluenced by imaginary judgments and pray for the light.

This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do.

The ultimate good in a liberal state is liberty.

There's a certain je ne sais quoi that Americans have in spades - a we-can-do-anything spirit that makes so many things possible for all of us. We're rugged individualists, aspirational in nature, and we like to think for ourselves.

The spirit of liberalism is to create free men; it is not the regimentation of men.

The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become.