Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. — Ayn Rand
Autonomy is impossible as long as one is driven by anything. — Gabor Mate
Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it. — Mikhail Bakunin
Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make — Stephen Covey
The spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the control. — Herbert Marcuse
Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives. — Daniel H. Pink
Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us. — Stephen Covey
Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement. — Daniel H. Pink
We are responsible to ourselves for our own existence; consequently we want to be the true helmsman of this existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless act of chance. — Friedrich Nietzsche
The discipline in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority. — Bertrand Russell
Individual liberty and interdependence are both essential for life in society. — Mahatma Gandhi
Short Individual Autonomy Quotes
Nothing is more powerful than individuals acting out of their own conscience. — Vaclav Havel
Individual liberty demonstrates that some manners of living are more successful than others. — Friedrich August von Hayek
At crucial junctures, every individual makes decisions and ... every decision is individual. — Raul Hilberg
Privacy is a core condition of being a free person. — Glenn Greenwald
Groups cannot grow, unless individuals grow within the group.
Individual Independence Quotes
True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
One individual may die for an idea, but that idea will, after his death, incarnate itself in a thousand lives. — Subhas Chandra Bose
It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
No individual raindrop ever consider itself responsible for the flood.
The negro is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations. — Che Guevara
I often warn people: "Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, 'There is no "I" in team.' What you should tell them is, 'Maybe not. But there is an "I" in independence, individuality and integrity. — George Carlin
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. — Albert Einstein
Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes difference.
If you want to take the road to independence and happiness, find the right person to depend on and travel down it with that person. — Amir Levine
Make a choice: Continue living your life feeling muddled in this abyss of self-misunderstanding, or you find your identity independent of it. — Meghan Markle
Individual Freedom Quotes
Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable. — Friedrich August von Hayek
An individual should not have too much freedom. A nation should have absolute freedom. — Sun Yat-sen
To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. — Thurgood Marshall
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
True patriotism springs from a belief in the dignity of the individual, freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth, universal brotherhood and good will, and a constant and earnest striving toward the principles and ideals on which this country was founded. — Eleanor Roosevelt
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. — John Steinbeck
Praise is a powerful people-builder. Catch individuals doing something right.
There's a difference between us. You think the people of this country exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it — William Wallace
To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men, their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas. — Brock Chisholm
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are...There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first. — Jim Morrison
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. — Bob Marley
Personal Independence Quotes
To the Muslim woman, the hijab provides a sense of empowerment. It is a personal decision to dress modestly according to the command of a genderless Creator; to assert pride in self, and embrace one's faith openly, with independence and courageous conviction. — Randa Abdel-Fattah
The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being. — Wassily Kandinsky
My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Success depends in a very large measure upon individual initiative and exertion, and cannot be achieved except by a dint of hard work.
I've come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that's as unique as a fingerprint - and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you. — Oprah Winfrey
A person's mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not give rise to probable cause to search that person. — Potter Stewart
Insecurity can be solved the hard way or the easy way—and by giving people the easy option, dogmatic tribes remove the pressure to do the hard work of evolving into a more independent person with a more internally-defined identity. — Tim Urban
A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.
You need to do some independent thinking, especially about the important things, and try to work them out for yourself. — Edward O. Thorp
Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. — Albert Einstein
If you look over a creative person’s shoulder, he will stop doing great work. — Bernard Arnault
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. — Ronald Reagan
Importance Of Individuality Quotes
The key to the Toyota Way and what makes Toyota stand out is not any of the individual elements…But what is important is having all the elements together as a system. It must be practiced every day in a very consistent manner, not in spurts. — Taiichi Ohno
The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team. — Phil Jackson
I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. — Karl Popper
The smallest minority on earth in the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
The clown has great importance as part of the search for what is laughable and ridiculous in man. We should put the emphasis on the rediscovery of our own individual clown, the one that has grown-up within us and which society does not allow us to express. — Jacques Lecoq
Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. — Andrew Carnegie
If you are asking me what the individual can do right now, in a political sense, I'd have to say he can't do all that much. Speaking for myself, I am more concerned with the transformation of the individual, which to me is much more important than the so-called political revolution. — William S. Burroughs
As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems.
Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man. — Norman Cousins
The most important thought that ever occupied my mind is that of my individual responsibility to God. — Daniel Webster
There is much the government can do and should do to improve the environment. But even more important is the individual who plants a tree or cleans a corner of neglect. For it is the individual who himself benefits, and also protects a heritage of beauty for his children and future generations. — Lady Bird Johnson
While microeconomics has focused on transactions between individuals, and macroeconomics on the role of government in the economy, the reality is that the most important economic decisions to any individual’s well-being are the ones they conduct in their trade-offs with their future self. — Saifedean Ammous
The great liberal betrayal of this generation is that in the name of liberalism, communal rights have been prioritized over individual autonomy within minority groups. And minorities within minorities really do suffer because of this betrayal. — Maajid Nawaz
Men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other. — David Riesman
When it comes to attachment, the key question is not about dependency, but rather about how well we are able to balance our need for closeness and autonomy. — Amir Levine
We live in a society that penalizes highly creative individuals for their non-conformist autonomy. This makes the teaching of problem solving in design both discouraging and difficult. A...student (has) massive blocks against new ways of thinking, engendered by some 16 years of mis-education. — Victor Papanek
We're into an age of excessive individuals, all right. We're into the age were independence, autonomy, convenience, sometimes selfishness. The new trinity of me, myself and I, seems to dominate. We know that's contrary to the very nature of the human person. The very nature of the human person needs God and needs other people. — Timothy M. Dolan
The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life. — Georg Simmel
At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy. — Harold Bloom
The good news is that women's roles have changed so dramatically over the past three decades that women now expect to have careers, balance work and family, express their individual autonomy. — Michael Kimmel
A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment. — Beverly Sills
A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment. — Lionel Trilling
Self-determination, the autonomy of the individual, asserts itself in the right to race his automobile, to handle his power tools, to buy a gun, to communicate to mass audiences his opinion, no matter how ignorant, how aggressive, it may be. — Herbert Marcuse
I'm for absolute autonomy of the individual, and an adult, competent woman has absolute autonomy. It's her choice. — Jack Kevorkian
Just as man as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors. — Carl Jung
For 70 years there's been a consensus among scholars and the American people on a reading to the Constitution that protects the right of privacy, the autonomy of individuals, while at the same time empowering the federal government to protect the less powerful. — Joe Biden
While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim- or arrogation- of power to stifle the autonomy of others. — Thomas Sowell
The key to freedom is accepting my own autonomy as an individual, and respecting the autonomy of other individuals, with all of what that means - whatever that means. — Benjamin Ward Richardson
The political objective of universal capitalism is maximum individual autonomy, the separation of political power wielded by the holders of public office from economic power held by citizens, and the broad diffusion of privately owned economic power. — Louis O. Kelso
Placing the burden on the individual to break down doors in finding better education for a child is attractive to conservatives because it reaffirms their faith in individual ambition and autonomy. But to ask an individual to break down doors that we have chained and bolted in advance of his arrival is unfair. — Jonathan Kozol
The autonomy of the individual appears to be complemented & enhanced by the movement of the group; while the effectiveness of the group seems to depend on the freedom of the individual. — Hakim Bey
Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear – that is, if they sustain alienation. And the spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the controls. — Herbert Marcuse
The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other. — David Riesman
I must acknowledge an interest, or rather a dismay, in discussing this 'family memoir,' for from experience and observation I have come to regard the American Nuclear Family in the last 50 years as the enemy of individual determination, of personal autonomy--in short, as a disease. — Richard Howard
The individual in the ordinary circumstances of living may feel more unreal than real; in a literal sense, more dead than alive; precariously differentiated from the rest of the world, so that his identity and autonomy are always in question.... He may not possess an over-riding sense of personal consistency or cohesiveness. He may feel more insubstantial than substantial, and unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is genuine, good, valuable. And he may feel his self as partially divorced from his body. — R. D. Laing
It looks as if there were a single ultimate goal for mankind, a far goal toward which all persons strive. This is called variously by different authors self-actualization, self-realization, integration, psychological health, individuation, autonomy, creativity, productivity, but they all agree that this amounts to realizing the potentialities of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human, everything that person can be. — Abraham Harold Maslow
I am certainly not arguing for the de facto autonomy of the individual work, even though there is much to be said for making the attempt to see it in that light as one facet of the reception process. — Brian Ferneyhough
An ethic that emphasizes relationship and community can be concerned with protecting the individual's interests, but always with an eye to trying to reconcile those interests with those of others. An ethic emphasizing rights and autonomy should be concerned with promoting enough community to foster a motivating concern for everyone's rights, not just one's own. — David Wong
I don't have any complaints about homosexuals being married in a civil ceremony. But I don't think that the government ought to require religious organizations, churches, should perform marriages between homosexuals if a local congregation decides otherwise. I believe in the autonomy of individual churches. — Jimmy Carter
Science without religion is dangerous because it necessarily entails a mechanization of humanity and consequent loss of individual autonomy and spirituality. On the other hand, religion without science is powerless because it lacks an effective means through which to actualize the ultimate reality. Science and religion must work together harmoniously. — Masao Abe
How you answer the question, whether individuals should be persuaded to live their whole lives in a state of chemical dependency, first upon contraceptive steroids and then on replacement therapy, depends upon your regard for the autonomy of the individual. If men would not live their lives this way, why should women? — Germaine Greer
Individualism is at once an ethical-psychological concept and an ethical-political one. As an ethical-psychological concept, individualism holds that a human being should think and judge independently, respecting nothing more than the sovereignty of his or her mind; thus, it is intimately connected with the concept of autonomy. As an ethical-political concept, individualism upholds the supremacy of individual rights — Nathaniel Branden
The man who is thus outside the confines of every value-combination, and has become the exclusive representative of an individual value, is metaphysically an outcast, for his autonomy presupposes the resolution and disintegration of all system into its individual elements; such a man is liberated from values and from style, and can be influenced only by the irrational. — Hermann Broch
In our culture privacy is often confused with secrecy. Open, honest, truth-telling individuals value privacy. We all need spaces where we can be alone with thoughts and feelings - where we can experience healthy psychological autonomy and can choose to share when we want to. Keeping secrets is usually about power, about hiding and concealing information. — Bell Hooks
The unity of the human race, as envisaged by Bahá'u'lláh, implies the establishment of a world commonwealth in which all nations, races, creeds and classes are closely and permanently united, and in which the autonomy of its state members and the personal freedom and initiative of the individuals that compose them are definitely and completely safeguarded. — Shoghi Effendi
Both Faith and Terror are instruments for the elimination of individual self-respect. Terror crushes the autonomy of self-respect, where Faith obtains its more or less voluntary surrender. In both cases, the result of the elimination of individual autonomy is - automatism. Both Faith and Terror reduce the human entity to a formula that can be manipulated at will. — Eric Hoffer
To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
It looks as if there were a single ultimate goal for mankind, a far goal toward which all persons strive. This is called variously by different authors self-actualization, self-realization, integration, psychological health, individuation, autonomy, creativity, productivity, but they all agree that this amounts to realizing the potentialities of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human, everything that person can be. — Abraham Maslow
In Conclusion
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