Quotes about Individuality

And if you couldn't be loved, the next best thing was to be let alone.

I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be.

I have no mission. No one has.

He was no longer quite sure whether anything he had ever thought or felt was truly his own property, or whether his thoughts were merely a common part of the world's store of ideas which had always existed ready-made and which people only borrowed, like books from a library.

A man who loses his privacy loses everything. And a man who gives it up of his own free will is a monster.

What is unique about the I hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual I is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.

It means what you are, wanting what you want and going after it without a sens od shame. People are slaves to rules.

Of course, uniformity rules everywhere. But in this park it has a wider choice of uniforms. So you can hold on to the illusion of your own individuality.

Kitsch is the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements. Those of us who live in a society where various political tendencies exist side by side and competing influences cancel or limit one another can manage more or less to escape the kitsch inquisition: the individual can preserve his individuality; the artist can create unusual works. But whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch.

a person who thinks should not try to persuade others to his belief; that is what puts him on the road to a system; on the lamentable road of the man of conviction; politicians like to call themselves that; but what is a conviction? It is a thought that has come to a stop, that has congealed, and the man of conviction is a man restricted.

For seven years he had lived bound to her,his every step subject to her scrutiny. She might as well have chained iron balls to his ankles. Suddenly his step was much lighter. He soared. He had entered Parmenides' magic field: he was enjoying the sweet lightness of being''.

Consciousness of being loved separates a woman from the herd