#duality

He thought: How difficult it is to explain yourself to yourself. Sometimes there only is, and no knowing. ↗

— Aidan Chambers

#life #life

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#defiance #empowerment #independence #individuality #self-assurance

Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#jodi #loneliness #loner #self #society

If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us--through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives--we are each of us unique. ↗

— Oliver Sacks

#human-condition #humanity #individuality #uniqueness #perception

Socialism needs to pull down wealth; liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve [them] ... by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the preeminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks ... to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#liberalism #liberty #progressive #socialism #liberty

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#individuality #liberty #tyranny #liberty

All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints. ↗

— David Sedaris

#individuality #fact

It never got weird enough for me. ↗

— Hunter S. Thompson

#uniqueness #individuality

It's weird not to be weird. ↗

— John Lennon

#individualism #paradox #individuality

I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish. ↗

— Edith Sitwell

#eccentricity #eels #fish #individuality #individuality