Quotes about Individualism

Love breaks the hold of individualism; it builds new communities out of the ashes of broken and fragmented relationships.

Need theories can thrive only in a context where the emphasis is on the individual rather than the community and where consumption is a way of life.

More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure.

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

For five hundred years, Christian teachers defined and redefined salvation almost entirely in individualistic terms, while well-disguised social evils—greed, pride, ambition, deceit, gluttony—moved to the highest levels of power and influence, even in our churches.

Even Martin Luther's needed "justification by faith" sent us on a five-hundred-year battle for the private soul of the individual.* Thus leaving us with almost no care for the earth, society, the outsider, or the full Body of Christ. This is surely one reason why Christianity found itself incapable of critiquing social calamities like Nazism, slavery, and Western consumerism.

One side effect of our individualized reading of the Gospel is that it allows the clergy great control over individual behavior, via threats and rewards. Obedience to authorities became the highest virtue in this framework, instead of love, communion, or solidarity with God or others, including the marginalized.

Privatized salvation never accumulates into corporate change because it attracts and legitimates individualists to begin with.

The national anthem of hell is, "I Did It My Way."

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

It is strange people should be so greedy when they are alone in the world!

It is so strange people should be so greedy, when they are alone in the world!