#individual

A man who seeks escape from the responsibility of supporting his life by his own thought and effort, and wishes to survive by conquering, ruling and exploiting others, is NOT an Individualist. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#survive #life

Bei gleicher Umgebung lebt doch jeder in einer anderen Welt. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#perspective #world #life

It wasn't until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you've got to write your own books and nobody else's, and then everything followed from there. ↗

— William Golding

#later-in-life #truth #writing #life

This, not incidentally, is another perfect setting for deindividuation: on one side, the functionary behind a wall of security glass following a script laid out with the intention that it should be applied no matter what the specific human story may be, told to remain emotionally disinvested as far as possible so as to avoid preferential treatment of one person over another - and needing to follow that advice to avoid being swamped by empathy for fellow human beings in distress. The functionary becomes a mixture of Zimbardo's prison guards and the experimenter himself, under siege from without while at the same time following an inflexible rubric set down by those higher up the hierarchical chain, people whose job description makes them responsible, but who in turn see themselves as serving the general public as a non-specific entity and believe or have been told that only strict adherence to a system can produce impartial fairness. Fairness is supposed to be vested in the code: no human can or should make the system fairer by exercising judgement. In other words, the whole thing creates a collective responsibility culminating in a blameless loop. Everyone assumes that it's not their place to take direct personal responsibility for what happens; that level of vested individual power is part of the previous almost feudal version of responsibility. The deindividuation is actually to a certain extent the desired outcome, though its negative consequences are not. ↗

— Nick Harkaway

#bureaucracy #government #individual #life #power

Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. ↗

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

#individual #individual responsibility #judgment #like #nothing

They thought that it would be a disgrace to go forth as a group. Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path. If there is a path it is someone else's path and you are not on the adventure. ↗

— Joseph Campbell

#life #path #life

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. ↗

— Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

#democracy #freedom #history #hope #individualism

The world is not ready for some people when they show up, but that shouldn't stop anyone. ↗

— Ashly Lorenzana

#expression #freedom #individuality #life #norms

If you want to be a slave in life, then continue going around asking others to do for you. They will oblige, but you will find the price is your choices, your freedom, your life itself. They will do for you, and as a result you will be in bondage to them forever, having given your identity away for a paltry price. Then, and only then, you will be a nobody, a slave, because you yourself and nobody else made it so. ↗

— Terry Goodkind

#freedom #individualism #power #slave #freedom

Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. ↗

— D.H. Lawrence

#escape #freedom #individual #obedience #purpose