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Individual Quotes

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Individual Quotes

“A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaningless of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring upon them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.”

Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer

“Over no nation does the press hold a more absolute control than over the people of America, for the universal education of the poorest classes makes every individual a reader.”

People Doe America Individual Nations Class Reader Universal Absolutes Presses Newspapers Poorest Universal Education

Book:The Complete Works of Washington Irving: Short Stories, Plays, Historical Works, Poetry and Autobiographical Writings (Illustrated): The Entire Opus of the Prolific American Writer, Biographer and Historian, Including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall and many more

Source: The Complete Works of Washington Irving: Short Stories, Plays, Historical Works, Poetry and Autobiographical Writings (Illustrated): The Entire Opus of the Prolific American Writer, Biographer and Historian, Including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall and many more

“The people, the ultimate governors, must have absolute freedom of, and therefore privacy of, their individual opinions and beliefs regardless of how suspect or strange they may appear to others. Ancillary to that principle is the conclusion that an individual must also have absolute privacy over whatever information he may generate in the course of testing his opinions and beliefs.”

“Reason cannot desire for man any condition other than that in which not only every individual enjoys the most absolute, unbounded freedom to develop himself out of himself, in true individuality, but in which physical nature, as well, need receive no other shaping by human hands than that which is given to her voluntarily by each individual, according to the measure of his wants and his inclinations, restricted only by the limits of his energy and his rights.”

Men Want Needs Humans Wells Reason Hands Desire Individual Energy Given Enjoy Rights Conditions Limits Absolutes Individuality Inclination Human Hands

Author:Wilhelm von Humboldt

“The very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that he might be.”

People Firsts Might Individual Democracy Essence Function Absolutes Peculiar

Author:Edwin Land

“The victory over Euclidean space was not achieved by isolated individuals, but by a field of young rebels opposed to all absolutes.”

Young Individual Space Fields Victory Absolutes Rebel Isolated

Author:Marshall McLuhan

“With kings, nations, and private individuals, the strongest assume to themselves rights over the weakest, and the same rule is followed by animals, by matter, by the elements, so that everything is performed in the universe by violence. And that order which we blame with some appearance of justice is the most universal, most absolute, most unchangeable, and most ancient law of nature.”

Source: La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims

“It is right, or absolute right, that an individual should develop the powers that are in him. He may be said to have a "natural right" to become what he is capable of becoming. This is his only natural right.”

Should May Said Individual Natural Becoming Capable Absolutes

Author:William Ernest Hocking

“The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago?”

“Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual. Reality always creeps in--the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.”

Doe Reality Individual Stars Known Power Fate Absolutes Tricks Despite Mortality Creeps Helplessness Absolute Power

Book:Existential Psychotherapy

Source: Existential Psychotherapy

“(Because) the notion of absolute truth is difficult to sustain outside the context of religion, ethical conduct is not something we engage in because it is somehow right in itself but because, like ourselves, all others desire to be happy and to avoid suffering. Given that this is a natural disposition, shared by all, it follows that each individual has a right to pursue this goal. Accordingly, I suggest that one of the things which determines whether an act is ethical or not is its effect on others' experience or expectation of happiness.”

Desire Suffering Individual Given Difficult Goal Natural Effects Truth Is Expectations Ethics Absolutes Notion Determine Pursue Ethical Disposition Absolute Truth

Author:Dalai Lama

“Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but superior - yet in such a way, please note, that it is the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is superior, that the single individual as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute.”

Way Mean Individual Atheism Higher Please Universal Relation Absolutes Notes Superiors Paradox Inferiors Justified Subordinates

Author:Soren Kierkegaard

“It was apparent to me that religion was an invented thing, a wish-fulfillment thing, a fantasy thing. It was much more real, dangerous, to accept that mortality was the end for you as an individual. As an atheist, I don't believe in an afterlife, so if you're thinking of murder, if your subject is murder, then that's a physical act of absolute destruction because you're ending something, a body, that is unique. That person never existed before, will never exist again, will not be karmically recycled, will not go to heaven, therefore I take it seriously.”

“Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual. Misfortune is a stepping stone for a genius, a piscina for a Christian, a treasure for a man of parts, and an abyss for a weakling.”

Men Christian Individual Events Depends Genius Stones Absolutes Treasure Certainty Outcomes Misfortunes Abyss Stepping Stones

Author:Honore de Balzac

“The ideal is the only absolute real; and it must become the real in the individual life as well, however impossible they may count it who never tried it.”

Wells May Real Individual Impossible Ideals Absolutes Individual Life

Book:Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)

“the solution to racism lies in our ability to see its ubiquity but not to concede its inevitability. It lies in the collective and institutional power to make change, at least as much as with the individual will to change. It also lies in the absolute moral imperative to break the childish, deadly circularity of centuries of blindness to the shimmering brilliance of our common, ordinary humanity.”

Source: Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race

“I dont know if there is a personal identity. We all imagine that we are absolute individuals. But when we begin to look for where this individuality resides, its very difficult to find.”

Ifs Knows Looks Individual Difficult Imagine Identity Absolutes Individuality Imagine That Personal Identity

Author:John Banville

“Slavery in the modern world implies the absolute deprivation of the individual's liberty, while possession of weapons and mastery of their use are means to the individual's liberation. We do not perceive how a man may be armed and at the same time bereft of his freedom.”

Men World May Mean Use Individual Liberty Modern Weapons Absolutes Slavery Possession Liberation Perceive Mastery Modern World Deprivation Bereft

Book:A History of Warfare

Source: A History of Warfare

“I do not despise genius-indeed, I wish I had a basketful of it. But yet, after a great deal of experience and observation, I have become convinced that industry is a better horse to ride than genius. It may never carry any man as far as genius has carried individuals, but industry-patient, steady, intelligent industry-will carry thousands into comfort, and even celebrity; and this it does with absolute certainty.”

Men May Doe Individual Wish Deals Industry Genius Comfort Horse Absolutes Intelligent Patient Convinced Observation Certainty Steady Despise Absolute Certainty

Author:Walter Lippmann

“Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncracy of a living being. It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self-determination.”

Self Faces Individual Existence Successful Conditions Personality Determination Universal Absolutes Individuality Supreme Realization Self Determination Affirmation Adaptation Innate

Author:Carl Jung