#individuality

The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned — would never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#independence #individuality #leadership #submission #suppression

The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#creativity #individuality #courage

We have many cases of men committing suicide rather than face their own individuality. I know of no case of a woman who committed suicide because she was gay. ↗

— George Weinberg

#case #cases #committed #committing #face

Sleep my little baby-oh Sleep until you waken When you wake you'll see the world If I'm not mistaken... Kiss a lover Dance a measure, Find your name And buried treasure... Face your life Its pain, Its pleasure, Leave no path untaken. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#choice #dance #identity #individuality #life

In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable--which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us. ↗

— Marilynne Robinson

#conformity #individuality #secrets #beauty

I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw [in the mirror] was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind. ↗

— Amy Tan

#individuality #life #passion #security #beauty

To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group--a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. ↗

— Cornel West

#critical-reflection #improve #individuality #jazz #jazz-freedom-fighter

When we learn to speak, we learn to translate. ↗

— Octavio Paz

#individuality #loneliness #selfhood #solitude #communication

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in. ↗

— James Baldwin

#individuality #inspirational-quotes #life #life-lessons #courage

It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia. ↗

— Eric Hoffer

#individuality #dreams