Quotes about Individualism
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.
— Mark Twain
Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.
— Henry David Thoreau
One sees in Latin America, and also elsewhere, among many Catholics a certain schizophrenia between individual and public morality.
— Pope Benedict XVI
At least I had frost on my nose, boots on my feet, and protest in my mouth.
— Jack Kerouac
I've got my full rucksack pack and it's spring, I'm going to go Southwest to the dry land, to the long lone land of Texas and Chihuahua and the gay streets of Mexico night, music coming out of doors, girls, wine, weed, wild hats, viva! What does it matter? Like the ants that have nothing to do but dig all day, I have nothing to do but what I want and be kind and remain nevertheless uninfluenced by imaginary judgments and pray for the light.
— Jack Kerouac
This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do.
— Jack Kerouac
There's a certain je ne sais quoi that Americans have in spades - a we-can-do-anything spirit that makes so many things possible for all of us. We're rugged individualists, aspirational in nature, and we like to think for ourselves.
— Marianne Williamson
The spirit of liberalism is to create free men; it is not the regimentation of men.
— Herbert Hoover
The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become.
— Ronald Reagan
The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.
— Ayn Rand
Not stones, nor wood, nor the art of artisans make a state; but where men are who know how to take care of themselves, these are cities and walls.
— John Quincy Adams
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.
— Albert Camus