#individuality

But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice, to their fate. I wonder, for it is hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word "I," could give it up and not know what they lost. But such has been the story, for I have lived in the City of the damned, and I know what horror men permitted to be brought upon them. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#ayn-rand #freedom #individuality #freedom

Constantly stopping to explain oneself may expand into a frustrating burden for the rare individual, so ceasing to do so is like finally dropping the weights and sprinting towards his goals. Those who insincerely misunderstand, who intentionally distort the motives of a pure-intentioned individual, then, no longer have the opportunity to block his path; instead, they are the ones left to stand on the sidelines shouting frustratedly in the wind of his trail. ↗

— Criss Jami

#burdens #explaining #explanations #frustration #goals

The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#life #life

In fact, being a unique individual is as much of a farce as trying to be like everyone else. Maybe more. ↗

— Nora Raleigh Baskin

#love

To influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#individuality #philosophy #music

...they (who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment. And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap of half-broken things that they call their communion and that they would like to call their happiness, if that were possible, and their future? And so each of them loses himself for the sake of the other person, and loses the other, and many others who still wanted to come. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#loss #love #love

I’d drive a thousand miles just to learn how to conserve gas and help save the environment. But that’s just who I am. I’m a thoughtful guy.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#conserve #drive #driving #environment #gas

You have to do stuff that average people don't understand because those are the only good things. ↗

— Andy Warhol

#individuality #originality #warhol #individuality

Autists are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It's that you're destroying the peg. ↗

— Paul Collins

#individuality #hard-work

You lose your individuality a huge amount when you have no money, and I certainly had that experience. ↗

— J. K. Rowling

#certainly #experience #had #huge #i