Quotes about Individuality

A lot of jobs don't allow you to be who you are. There is dignity in work only when it is work freely accepted.

You are both a work of art and an artist at work.

You are an artist. What work of art will you leave behind?

Our best work can't possibly appeal to the average masses, only our average work can. Finding the humility to happily walk away from those that don't get it unlocks our ability to do great work.

Measuring sticks try to rank some people as big and some people as small - but we aren't sizes. We are souls. There are no better people or worse people - there are only God-made souls.

If you live your life by what others say, it stops being your life.

I was asked by an NPR reporter once why don't I talk about race that often. I said, 'It's because I'm a neurosurgeon.' And she thought that was a strange response... I said, 'You see, when I take someone to the operating room, I'm actually operating on the thing that makes them who they are. The skin doesn't make them who they are.'

Your spouse, your friends, and your children cannot be the sources of your identity.

There was a point when I was 15 or 16 that I realized that my father wanted me to be a loner. I decided, 'It's okay to be an introvert, but I don't want to be a loner. I want a few other people in my life.'

Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.

Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.

The only artists I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfect uninteresting in what they are.