#individuality

I was the walrus, but now I am John...and so my friends, you'll just have to carry on. The dream is over. ↗

— John Lennon

#dream #individuality #walruses #dreams

If little else, the brain is an educational toy. The problem with possessing such an engaging toy is that other people want to play with it, too. Sometime they'd rather play with yours than theirs. Or they object if you play with yours in a different manner from the way they play with theirs. The result is, a few games out of a toy department of possibilities are universally and endlessly repeated. If you don't play some people's game, they say that you have "lost your marbles," not recognizing that, while Chinese checkers is indeed a fine pastime, a person may also play dominoes, chess, strip poker, tiddlywinks, drop-the-soap or Russian roulette with his brain. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#creativity #deviance #games #individuality #normalizing

[...] the diversity of our opinions, consequently, does not arise from some being endowed with a larger share of reason than others, but solely from this, that we conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects. For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellences, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it. ↗

— René Descartes

#individuality #equality

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

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

I am not a number; I am a free man. ↗

— Patrick McGoohan

#freedom #individuality #nonconformity #the-prisoner #freedom

To be a member of such a crowd ... is not much to be far removed from solitude; the freedom of everyone is assured by the freedom to which everyone else lays claim. ↗

— Remy de Gourmont

#democracy #freedom #individuality #mob #freedom

To live in any true sense of the word is to reject others; to accept them, one must be able to renounce, to do oneself violence, to act against one's own nature, to weaken oneself; we conceive freedom only for ourselves - we extend it to our neighbours only at the cost of exhausting efforts; whence the precariousness of liberalism, a defiance of our instincts, a brief and miraculous success, a state of exception, at the antipodes of our deepest imperatives. ↗

— Emil Cioran

#individuality #liberalism #philosophy #freedom

To be an outlaw you must first have a base in law to reject and get out of, I never had such a base. I never had a place I could call home that meant any more than a key to a house, apartment or hotel room. … Am I alien? Alien from what exactly? Perhaps my home is my dream city, more real than my waking life precisely because it has no relation to waking life… ↗

— William S. Burroughs

#creativity #individuality #philosophy #art

We are flawed creatures, all of us. Some of us think that means we should fix our flaws. But get rid of my flaws and there would be no one left. ↗

— Sarah Vowell

#individuality #inspirational #inspirational