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Individual Quotes

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Individual Quotes

“When most of the greatest individuals in history were misunderstood and you've spent so much of your own adult life misunderstood, you can't help but believe that the majority of people know very little worth knowing.”

People Knows Believe Littles Helping Individual Knowing Adults Majority Misunderstanding Misunderstood Being Misunderstood

Book:Killosophy

Source: Killosophy

“Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain. Nor must we forget that there has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies and it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous and doctrinaire majority democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship.”

“It may seem to your conceited to suppose that you can do anything important toward improving the lot of mankind. But this is a fallacy. You must believe that you can help bring about a better world. A good society is produced only by good individuals, just as truly as a majority in a presidential election is produced by the votes of single electors. Everybody can do something toward creating in his own environment kindly feelings rather than anger, reasonableness rather than hysteria, happiness rather than misery.”

Source: A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42

“All the important human advances that we know of since historical times began have been due to individuals of whom the majority faced virulent public opposition.”

Knows Humans Has Beens Important Individual Progress Majority Historical Dues Opposition

Author:Bertrand Russell

“The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.”

“Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws.... There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased -- freedom from the despotism of the majority.”

Source: Alexander Hamilton: Lapham's Quarterly - Special Issue

“There is a fundamental similarity between the persecution of individuals who engage in consenting homosexual activity in private, or who ingest, inject, or smoke various substances that alter their feelings and thoughts - and the traditional persecution of men for their religion... What all of these persecutions have in common is that the victims are harassed by the majority not because they engage in overtly aggressive or destructive acts... but because their conduct or appearance offends a group intolerant to and threatened by human differences.”

“Though it is disguised by the illusion that a bureaucracy accountable to a majority of voters, and susceptible to the pressure of organized minorities, is not exercising compulsion, it is evident that the more varied and comprehensive the regulation becomes, the more the state becomes a despotic power as against the individual. For the fragment of control over the government which he exercises through his vote is in no effective sense proportionate to the authority exercised over him by the government.”

“The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side.”

Soul Truth School Individual Sides Education Consciousness Mass Majority Constant Errors University Newspapers Propaganda Isolated Repetition Encyclopedia Harbour

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The democratic ideal springs from the ideas of liberty, equality, majority rule through free elections, protection of the rights of minorities, and freedom to subscribe to multiple loyalties in matters of religion, economics, and politics rather than to a total loyalty to the state. The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual, and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible.”

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions of the individuals are formed.”

“The vast majority of the students I have taught have become self-sufficient and confident individuals who enjoy their lives.”

Self Individual Enjoy Students Taught Buddhism Majority Sufficient Rama Self Sufficient

Author:Frederick Lenz

“The majority of the ten thousand states of mind cannot be discussed. It is rather a question of teaching a person to step outside the conceptual framework they have and transmitting blocks of awareness to an individual psychically.”

Mind Persons States Individual Steps Teaching Awareness Masters Thousand Ten Majority Block State Of Mind Framework Zen Master Conceptual Framework

Author:Frederick Lenz

“The parliamentary principle of vesting legislative power in the decision of the majority rejects the authority of the individual and puts a numerical quota of anonymous heads in its place. In doing so it contradicts the aristocratic principle, which is a fundamental law of nature.”

Law Individual Decision Principles Authority Fundamentals Majority Rejects Laws Of Nature Parliamentary Quota Aristocratic

Book:Mein Kampf

Source: Mein Kampf

“What frightens me about America today is that in the large majority there is no active sense of the value of the individual: few citizens feel that they are the Republic, responsible for what happens. And when the individual in a democracy ceases to feel his importance, then there is grave danger that he will give over his freedom, if not to a Fascist State, then to the advertising men or Publicity Agents or to the newspaper he happens to read.”

“The real transgression occurs when religion wants government to tell citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their lives. The failure of Prohibition proves the futility of such an attempt when a majority or even a substantial minority happens to disagree. Some questions may be inherently individual ones, or people may be sharply divided about whether they are. In such cases, like Prohibition and abortion, the proper role of religion is to appeal to the conscience of the individual, not the coercive power of the state.”

People Want May Real States Government Happens Individual Roles Cases Citizens Prove Conscience Majority Appeals Abortion Minorities Divided Disagree Prohibition Futility Transgression

Author:Edward Kennedy

“I was perfectly certain that I had nothing to offer of an individual nature and that my only chance of doing my duty as the wife of a public official was to do exactly as the majority of women were doing.”

Certain Politics Individual Chance Wife Duty Offers Majority Officials Public Officials

Book:Autobiography

Source: Autobiography