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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

“The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.”

Self Whole Individual Loses Forget Sacrifice Society Produce Losing Impulse Mask Collectives Willingness Forget It Readiness Unwanted Compact Revulsion Slough

Book:THE TRUE BELIEVER

Source: THE TRUE BELIEVER

“The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing west offers to backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of communal existence.”

Self Individual Existence Society Offers Advantage Ideals West Population Frustration Substitutes Plague Advancement Soothing Anonymity

Book:THE TRUE BELIEVER

Source: THE TRUE BELIEVER

“When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives.”

Source: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“The individual is not a killer, but the group is, and by identifying with it the individual is transformed into a killer.”

Individual Groups Society Transformed Killers Identifying

Book:Kaleidoscope: essays from Drinkers of infinity, and The heel of Achilles and later pieces and stories

Source: Kaleidoscope: essays from Drinkers of infinity, and The heel of Achilles and later pieces and stories

“The integrative tendencies of the individual operate through the mechanisms of empathy, sympathy, projection, introjection, identification, worship- all of which make him feel that he is a part of some larger entity which transcends the boundaries of the individual self. This psychological urge to belong, to participate, to commune is as primary and real as its opposite. The all-important question is the nature of that higher entity of which the individual feels himself a part.”

“Society is only possible on these terms, that the individual finds therein a strengthening of his own ego and his own will.”

Individual Term Society Ego Strengthening

Book:Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist

Source: Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist

“Every change in conditions will make necessary some change in the use of resources, in the direction and kind of human activities, in habits and practices. And each change in the actions of those affected in the first instance will require further adjustments that will gradually extend through the whole of society. Every change thus in a sense creates a "problemfor society, even though no single individual perceives it as such; it is gradually "solvedby the establishment of a new overall adjustment.”

Firsts Humans Kind Whole Use Action Individual Practice Society Conditions Habit Activity Resources Instance Perceive Affected Establishment Adjustment Human Activity

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“Society does not exist for itself, but for the individual; and man goes into it, not to lose, but to find himself.”

Men Doe Individual Loses Society

Book:The Influence of Jesus

Source: The Influence of Jesus

“But the individual was not a tool for something. He was the maker of tools. He was the one who must build. Even for the best purpose it is criminal to turn an individual into simply a means for some ultimate end. A society in which the dignity of the individual is destroyed cannot hope to be a decent society.”

Mean Ends Purpose Turns Individual Society Tools Dignity Ultimate Criminals Destroyed Decent Makers

Book:A land of our own: an oral autobiography

Source: A land of our own: an oral autobiography

“Man is not made for society, but society is made for man. No institution can be good which does not tend to improve the individual.”

Men Doe Made Individual Society Institutions Be Good

Book:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

Source: Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

“Most people are shaped to the form of their culture because of the enormous malleability of their original endowment. They are plastic to the moulding force of the society into which they are born. It does not matter whether, with the Northwest Coast, it requires delusions of self-reference, or with our own civilization the amassing of possessions. In any case the great mass of individuals take quite readily the form that is presented to them.”

People Doe Self Matter Form Culture Individual Force Born Cases Society Civilization Mass Originals Possession Enormous Delusion Plastic Coast Endowment

Book:PATTERNS OF CULTURE

Source: PATTERNS OF CULTURE

“Society in its full sense ... is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it. No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilization has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual.”

Lasts Culture Individual Society Civilization Elements Analysis Contribution Entity Threshold

Book:PATTERNS OF CULTURE

Source: PATTERNS OF CULTURE