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Individual Quotes

“God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence. Corr. Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner.”

God Individual Causes Existence Essence Fixed Attributes Efficient Definite Modification Attributes Of God

Author:Baruch Spinoza

“When a person identifies himself with a group his critical faculties are diminished and his passions enhanced by a kind of emotive resonance. The individual is not a killer, the group is, and by identifying with it, the individual becomes one. This is the infernal dialect reflected in man's history.”

Men Kind Persons Passion Individual History Groups Criticism Critical Faculty Killers Identifying Resonance Dialect

Author:Arthur Koestler

“Under our institutions each individual is born to sovereignty. Whatever he may adopt as a means of livelihood, his real business is serving his country. He cannot hold himself above his fellow men. The greatest place of command is really the place of obedience, and the greatest place of honor is really the place of service.”

Men May Mean Real Country Individual Born Honor Fellows Institutions Command Obedience Serving Sovereignty Fellow Man Livelihood

Author:Calvin Coolidge

“The duties which a police officer owes to the state are of a most exacting nature. No one is compelled to choose the profession ofa police officer, but having chosen it, everyone is obliged to live up to the standard of its requirements. To join in that high enterprise means the surrender of much individual freedom.”

Mean States Individual Duty Discipline Standards Police Profession Surrender Chosen Enterprise Officers Requirements Compelled Obliged Police Officer Individual Freedom

Author:Calvin Coolidge

“By "essence" I understand a universal, of any degree of complexity and definition, which may be given immediately, whether to sense or to thought.... This object of pure sense or pure thought, with no belief superadded, an object inwardly complete and individual, but without external relations or physical status, is what I call an essence.”

May Individual Belief Given Objects Pure Degrees Essence Universal Relation Definitions Complexity

Author:George Santayana

“If a well-constituted individual refrains from blazoning aught amiss or calamitous in his family, a nation in the like circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet.”

Ifs Wells May Individual Nations History Circumstances Refrain Reproach Candor Discreet

Book:Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories

Source: Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories

“We all know that the nation can't divide more than the people produce, but as individuals we try to get more than our share and that's how we get ahead.”

People Knows Trying Individual Nations Share Produce Divides Get Ahead

Author:William Feather

“Always remember that there is a law of compensation which operates just as infallibly as gravitation, and that victory goes at last where it ought to, and that this is just as true of individuals as of nations.”

Lasts Remember Law Individual Nations Ought Victory Wages Compensation Gravitation

Author:William Feather

“... while one-half of the people of the United States are robbed of their inherent right of personal representation in this freestcountry on the face of the globe, it is idle for us to expect that the men who thus rob women will not rob each other as individuals, corporations and Government.”

People Men States Government Faces Individual United Half United States Crime He Man Injustice Corporations Inherent Globes Representation Idle Suffrage One Half Woman Suffrage

Author:Susan B. Anthony

“The multiplication of individual sects should not fool us: the important point is that the whole of America is preoccupied with the sect as a moral institution, with its immediate demand for beatification, its material efficacity, its compulsion for justification, and doubtless also with its madness and frenzy.”

Should Important Whole America Individual Moral Materials Fool Demand Madness Institutions Justification Compulsion Sects Frenzy Multiplication

Book:America

Source: America

“In the older times it was seldom said to little girls, as it always has been said to boys, that they ought to have some definite plan, while they were children, what to be and do when they were grown up. There was usually but one path open before them, to become good wives and housekeepers. And the ambition of most girls was to follow their mothers' footsteps in this direction; a natural and laudable ambition. But girls, as well as boys, must often have been conscious of their own peculiar capabilities,--must have desired to cultivate and make use of their individual powers.”

Source: A New England girlhood

“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”

Source: Golden Hours with Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“The American people owe it to themselves, and to the cause of free Government, to prove by their establishments for the advancement and diffusion of knowledge, that their political Institutionsare as favorable to the intellectual and moral improvement of Man as they are conformable to his individual and social rights.”

People Men Government Political Individual Social Causes Education Moral Rights Prove Intellectual Improvement Establishment Advancement Free Government Diffusion

Book:Selected Writings of James Madison

Source: Selected Writings of James Madison

“As to the permanent interest of individuals in the aggregated interests of the community, and in the proverbial maxim, that honesty is the best policy, present temptation is often found to be an overmatch for those considerations.”

Found Individual Interest Community Honesty Policy Temptation Permanent Consideration Maxims Proverbial Honesty Is The Best Policy

Book:Selected Writings of James Madison

Source: Selected Writings of James Madison

“A nation's domestic and foreign policies and actions should be derived from the same standards of ethics, honesty and morality which are characteristic of the individual citizens of the nation.”

Should Government Action Individual Nations Honesty Policy Citizens Morality Standards Ethics Characteristics Foreign Policy

Author:Jimmy Carter

“Because the process of innovation often relies heavily on the combining and recombining of previous innovations, the broader and deeper the pool of accessible ideas and individuals, the more opportunities there are for innovation.”

Ideas Opportunity Individual Process Innovation Deeper Rely Pool Combining

Author:Erik Brynjolfsson

“Men of widely divergent views in our own country live in peace together because they share certain common aspirations which are more important than their differences.... The common responsibility of all Americans is to become effective, helpful participants in a way of life that blends and harmonizes the fiercely competitive demands of the individual and society.”

“Our reliance in this country is on the inquiring, individual human mind. Our strength is founded there; our resilience, our ability to face an ever-changing future and to master it. We are not frozen into the backward-facing impotence of those societies, fixed in the rigidness of an official dogma, to which the future is the mirror of the past. We are free to make the future for ourselves.”

Mind Humans Country Past Faces Individual Ability Masters Mirrors Resilience Fixed Officials Human Mind Dogma Frozen Reliance Impotence Inquiring

Author:Archibald MacLeish

“Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.”

Ifs Real Individual Economic Economics Our Society Spectacles Real Success

Author:David Attenborough

“Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime--and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.”

“...America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind. We are able to accommodate, at a time, only one national hero; and we demand that that hero shall be uniform and invincible. As a literate people we are preoccupied, neither with the race nor the individual, but with the type. Yesterday, we romanticized the "tough guy;" today, we are romanticizing the underprivileged, tough or tender; tomorrow, we shall begin to romanticize the pure primitive.”

“Duty is that mode of action on the part of the individual which constitutes the best possible application of his capacity to the general benefit.”

Action Individual Duty Benefits Capacity Application

Book:Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness: By William Godwin

Source: Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness: By William Godwin

“If we can, when we have established individual discipline, arrange the children, sending each one to his own place, in order, trying to make them understand the idea that thus placed they look well, and that it is a good thing to be placed in order . . .”

Ifs Trying Wells Looks Children Ideas Order Individual Discipline Good Things Montessori

Book:The Montessori Reader

Source: The Montessori Reader

“A nation fights well in proportion to the amount of men and materials it has. And the other equation is that the individual soldier in that army is a more effective soldier the poorer his standard of living has been in the past.”

Men Wells Has Beens War Past Fighting Individual Nations Materials Amount Standards Army Soldier Proportion Equations Standards Of Living

Book:The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition, With a New Introduction by the Author

Source: The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition, With a New Introduction by the Author

“Of this be wary. Honor and fame are often regarded as interchangeable. Both involve an appraisal of the individual. . . but I suggest this difference. Fame is morally neutral.”

Individual Differences Honor Fame Appraisal

Author:Edward R. Murrow

“In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to others. There is a greater fullness of life about his own existence, and when there is more life in the units there is more in the mass which is composed of them.”

Persons Individual Existence Greater Development Mass Individuality Valuable Proportion Units Fullness Fullness Of Life

Book:On Liberty: Representative Government ; The Subjection of Women : Three Essays

Source: On Liberty: Representative Government ; The Subjection of Women : Three Essays

“A people may prefer a free government, but if by momentary discouragement or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or trust him with powers to subvert their institutions, in all these cases they are unfit for liberty.”

Source: On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays

“Great individuals make great successes out of failure.”

Motivational Individual Greatness Failure Great Success

Author:Denis Waitley

“Habit is a compromise effected between an individual and his environment.”

Individual Environment Habit Compromise

Author:Samuel Beckett

“The purpose of adolescence is to revise the past, not to obliterate it. . . . Adolescence entails the deployment of family passions to the passions and ideals that bind individuals to new family units, to their communities, to the species, to nature, to the cosmos. Therefore, given half a chance, the revolution at issue in adolescence becomes a revolution of transformation, not of annihilation.”

Past Purpose Passion Individual Given Community Chance Half Issues Revolution Ideals Transformation Species Cosmos Adolescence Units Annihilation Deployment Family Unit New Family

Author:Louise J. Kaplan

“Adolescents are the bearers of cultural renewal, those cycles of generation and regeneration that link our limited individual destinies with the destiny of the species.”

Individual Destiny Generations Species Cycles Links Renewal Regeneration

Book:Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood

Source: Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood

“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters "woman's peculiar sphere," her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”

“The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul--our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment--our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness.”

“Everyone in the full enjoyment of all the blessings of his life, in his normal condition, feels some individual responsibility forthe poverty of others. When the sympathies are not blunted by any false philosophy, one feels reproached by one's own abundance.”

Feels Philosophy Individual Responsibility Poverty Conditions Blessing Normal Enjoyment Abundance Sympathy Social Responsibility Individual Responsibility

Book:Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815-1897

Source: Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815-1897

“Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded--a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family and position.”

“The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself.”

Believe May Self Reason Government Asks Individual Social Voice Trade Profession Bread Factors Chiefs Reason Why Rely Strongest Individualism Sovereignty Social Life Birthright

Author:Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Pornography is a theatre of types, never of individuals.”

Individual Type Theatre Pornography

Author:Susan Sontag

“Harmelody allows everybody to be an individual who does not have to imitate anybody else.”

Author:Ornette Coleman

“To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them.”

Men Country Individual Capitalism Collections Free Man

Book:Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition

Source: Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition

“Municipal laws are a supply to the wisdom of each individual; and, at the same time, by restraining the natural liberty of men, make private interest submit to the interest of the public.”

Men Wisdom Law Individual Interest Natural Liberty Submit Restraining

Book:Essays and treatises on several subjects: essays, moral, political and literary

Source: Essays and treatises on several subjects: essays, moral, political and literary

“By an individual being, whatever one's metaphysical doctrine, one means an unique being, that is, a being which is alone of its own type, or is such that no other of its class exists.”

Mean Individual Class Type Unique Doctrine Metaphysical

Book:The Religious Philosophy of Josiah Royce; Edited, with an Introductory Essay, by Stuart Gerry Brown

Source: The Religious Philosophy of Josiah Royce; Edited, with an Introductory Essay, by Stuart Gerry Brown

“What education is to the individual man, revelation is to the human race. Education is revelation coming to the individual man, and revelation is education that has come, and is still coming to the human race.”

Men Humans Stills Individual Race Education Human Race Revelations

Author:Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

“The individual protests against the world, but he doesn't get beyond protest, he is just a single protester. When he wants to be more than that, he has to counter power with power, he has to oppose the system with another system.”

World Want Individual Power Protest

Author:Friedrich Durrenmatt

“It is an old adage that honesty is the best policy-this applies to public as well as private life-to States as well as individuals.”

Wells States Individual Leadership Honesty Policy Private Life Adages Honesty Is The Best Policy

Book:pt. III. Private letters from the time Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Army to that of his inauguration as president of the United States: December, 1783-April, 1789

Source: pt. III. Private letters from the time Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Army to that of his inauguration as president of the United States: December, 1783-April, 1789

“Peace in the world relies on individuals finding inner peace.”

World Individual Findings Inner Peace Rely Finding Inner Peace

Author:Dalai Lama

“Every epoch which seeks renewal first projects its ideal into a human form. In order to comprehend its own essence tangibly, the spirit of the time chooses a human being as its prototype and raising this single individual, often one upon whom it has chanced to come, far beyond his measure, the spirit enthuses itself for its own enthusiasm.”

Firsts Humans Form Spirit Order Individual Change Human Beings History Projects Ideals Essence Enthusiasm Renewal Epoch Human Form Prototype

Author:Stefan Zweig

“The Battle of Waterloo is a work of art with tension and drama with its unceasing change from hope to fear and back again, changewhich suddenly dissolves into a moment of extreme catastrophe, a model tragedy because the fate of Europe was determined within this individual fate.”

Art Moments Individual History Fate Drama Battle Models Europe Tragedy Extremes Determined Tension Works Of Art Catastrophe Back Again Waterloo

Author:Stefan Zweig

“Only that which points the human spirit beyond its own limitations into what is universally human gives the individual strength superior to his own. Only in suprahuman demands which can hardly be fulfilled do human beings and peoples feel their true and sacred measure.”

Inspirational Giving Feels Humans Spirit Individual Human Beings Demand Sacred Superiors Limitation Fulfilled Human Spirit Individual Strength

Author:Stefan Zweig

“Fate forces its way to the powerful and violent. With subservient obedience it will assume for years dependency on one individual:Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, because it loves the elemental human being who grows to resemble it, the intangible element. Sometimes, and these are the most astonishing moments in world history, the thread of fate falls into the hands of a complete nobody but only for a twitching minute.”

“The German passion for bureaucracy -- for written and signal forms . . . to move about, to work, to exist -- is like a steel pin pinning each French individual to a sheet of paper, the way an entomologist pins each specimen insect . . .”

Way Moving Form Passion Individual Written Paper Steel Sheets Bureaucracy Signals Insects Pins

Author:Janet Flanner