Dictionary Home » Famous Quotes » individual

individual quotes

  • The feeling individual appeared weakhe felt only his own weakness.But if he accepted his weakness and his separateness and descended into himself, intensifying his loneliness, he discovered his solidarity with other isolated creatures.

    - Saul Bellow
      Nobel prize lecture, Stockholm,12 Dec.

  • Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

    - Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
      The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

  • I hold no brief for private enterprise.But I have unshakeable faith in individual enterprise.

    - C(harles) L(uther) Burton
      A Sense of Urgency: Memoirs of a Canadian Merchant.

  • While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for theindividual, it isbestfor therace, becauseit insures thesurvival ofthefittest ineverydepartment. Weaccept and welcome, therefore, as conditions towhichwe must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential to the future progress of the race.

    - Andrew Carnegie
      'The Gospel of  Wealth', in the North  American Review,  Jun.

  • If the individual isno longer to be sovereign, if the police can pick him up whenever they do not like the cut of his jib†we enter a new regime.

    - (George) Norman Douglas
      Dissenting opinion in ruling to uphold the police right 'to stop and frisk',10  Jun.

  • If the idea of society were extinguished in individual minds and the beliefs, traditions and aspirations of the group were no longer felt and shared by individuals, society would die.We can say of it what we just said of divinity: it is real only in so far as it has a place in the human consciousness, and this place is whatever we may give it.

    - EŁ  mile Durkheim
      The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (translated by Joseph Ward Swain,1965).

  • All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.

    - RalphWaldo Ellison
      Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

  • If I'd wanted to be an individual, I'd have taken up tennis.

    - Ruud Gullit
    Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • All in all, if one sought to design a life style which was destructive of the individual, the way that business has structured itself would seem to be almost ideal.

    - SirJohn Harvey-Jones
      Making It Happen: Reflections on Leadership.

  • The more the state'plans'the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.

    - Friedrich August von Hayek
      The Road to Serfdom.

  • It takes up no falling cause; fights no uphill battle; advocatesnogreat principle; holdsout a helping hand to no oppressed or obscure individual. It is 'ever strong upon the stronger side'.

    -William Hazlitt
      Of  The Times. In the Edinburgh Review, May.

  • Every form is individual, there exists none which is abstract.

    -Wilhelm Heinse
    Quoted in  J  J  W Heinse Sa«  mmtliche Werke (1903^25).

  •   In the sphere of natural investigation, as in poetry and painting, the delineation of that which appeals most strongly to the imagination, derives its collective interest from the vivid truthfulness with which the individual features are portrayed.

    - David Hume
    ^62  Kosmos (translated as Cosmos,1897).

  • I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark, 31 Mar. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

  • It might have been supposed that competition between expert professionals, possessing judgement and knowledge beyond that of the average private investor, would correct the vagaries of the ignorant individual left to himself. It happens, however, that the energies and skills of the professional investor and speculator are mainly occupied elsewhere. For most of these persons are, in fact, largely concerned, not with making superior long-term forecasts of the probable yield on an investment over its whole life, but with foreseeing changes in the conventional bias of valuation a short time ahead of the general public† This battle of wits to anticipate the basis of conventional valuation a few months hence, rather than the prospective yield of an investment over a long term of years, does not even require gulls amongst the public to feed the maws of the professional; it can be played by professionals amongst themselves.

    -John Maynard, 1st Baron Keynes (of Tilton)
      The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.

  • The ethical reality of the individual is the only reality.

    - So«  ren Aabye Kierkegaard
      Concluding Unscientific Postscript, bk.2, pt.2, ch.3 (translated by Swenson and Lowrie).

  • The definition of an individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.

    - Arthur Koestler
      Darkness at Noon,'The Grammatical Fiction', pt.2.

  • History does not provide us with any instance of a society that repressed the economic liberties of the

    - Irving Kristol
    Hungarian-born  British  film  producer.  He  worked  in Vienna, Berlin  and  Hollywood  before  coming  to  Britain  in  the  early 1930s  where  he  founded  London  Film  Productions   and  the Denham Studios.

  • What calls me is that lifted, rough-tongued bell (Art, if you like) whose individual sound Insists I too am an individual.

    - Philip Arthur Larkin
      'Reasons for  Attendance'.

  • Liberty, asit is conceived bycurrent opinion, hasnothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

    -Joseph R(aymond) McCarthy
      Speech. Collected as 'The Contagion of Ideas', in On the Contrary (1961).

  • It never or rarely happens that a republic or monarchy is well constituted, or its old institutions entirely reformed, unless it is only done by one individual.

    - Niccolo'   di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
    ^17  Discourses on First  Ten Books of Livy.

  • There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away.

    - Norman Kingsley Mailer
      Cannibals and Christians,'My Hope For  America'.

  • Denn dem Menschen ist amWiedererkennen gelegen; er m o« chte das Alte im Neuen wiederfinden und das Typische im Individuellen. For man always searches for recognition: he would like to find the old in the new and the ordinary in the individual.

    -Thomas Mann
      Freud und die Zukunft.

  • It's all honourable enough in its way, but it creates societies which simply cannot sustain any kind of democratic structure. It always leads to totalitarian and corrupt tyrannies† There's no tradition of moral individual courage in Chinese culture.

    -Timothy Mo
      Of Chinese tradition. In The Fiction Magazine, vol.1, no.4.

  • Aworkof art has no importance whatever to society.It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me. 606

    -Vladimir Nabokov
      Interview in Playboy,  Jan.

  •    Moralit a« t ist Herden-Instinkt im Einzelnen. Morality is herd instinct in the individual.

    - FriedrichWilhelm Nietzsche
      Die fro«  hliche Wissenschaft ( The Gay Science), section116 (translated by W Kaufmann).

  • The novel is practicallya Protestant form of art; it is the product of the free mind, of the autonomous individual.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      Inside the Whale,'Inside The Whale'.

  • In all our studies of the brain, no mechanism has been discovered that can force the mind to think, or the individual to believe, anything. The mind continues free. That is a statement I have long considered. I have made every effort to disprove it, without success.

    -Wilder Graves Penfield
      SecondThoughts: Science, theArts, and the Spirit.

  • What matters is not what any individual thinks, but what is true. A teacher who does not equip his pupils with the rudimentary tools to discover this is substituting indoctrination for teaching.

    - Richard Stanley Peters
      Ethics and Education.

  • For I spend all my time going about trying to persuade you, young and old, to make your first and chief concern not for your bodies nor for your possessions, but for the highest welfare of your souls, proclaiming as Igo,Wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the state.

    -Plato
    Apology, 30b (translated by H Tredennick).

  •    Extreme freedom can't be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery, whether for a private individual or for a city.

    -Plato
    Republic, bk.8, 564a (translated by G M A Grube, revised by C D C Reeve).

  •    The remarkable legion of the unremarked, whose individual opinions are not colorful or different enough to make news, but whose collective opinion, when crystallized, can make history.

    -William Safire
      Of the so-called'silent majority'. Safire's New Political Dictionary.

  • Unsterblichkeit der Individualit a« t verlangen heiÞt eigentlich einen Irrtum ins Unendliche perpetuieren wollen. Denn im Grunde ist doch jede Individualit a« t nur ein spezieller Irrtum, Fehltritt, etwas, das besser nicht w a« re, ja wovon uns zuru«  ckzubringen der eigentliche Zweck des Lebens ist. To desire immortality for theindividual isreally thesame as wanting to perpetuate an error for ever; for at bottom every individuality is really only a special error, a false step, something that it would be better should not be, in fact something from which it isthe real purpose of life to bring us back.

    - Arthur Schopenhauer
      DieWelt alsWille undVorstellung (TheWorld asWill and Representation), vol.2, ch.41 (translated by E F J Payne).

  • The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind ahead, even more than teamwork.

    - Igor Ivan Sikorsky
    Quoted in his NewYorkTimes obituary, 27 Oct1972.

  • The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.

    - Samuel Smiles
      Self-Help, ch.1.

  • Every individual†intends only his own gain, and he is in this as in many other cases led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention† By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the publick good.

    - Adam Smith
      An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.4, ch.3.

  • Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'Locksley Hall', l.141^2.

  • There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.

    - Margaret HildaThatcher, Baroness Thatcher
      In Woman's Own, 31 Oct.

  • Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his Government a Fair Deal.

    - Harry S Truman
      Speech to Congress, 6 Sep.

  • For sheer courage and endurance, physical and mental, the two men stand together as examples of what toughness the body will find, if the spirit within it is tough; and as very worthy representatives of our national capacity for individual enterprise, which it is hoped even themodern craze for regulating everydetail of our lives will never stifle.

    - Archibald Percival, 1st Earl Wavell
      Of F Spencer Chapman andT E Lawrence. Quoted in foreword to F Spencer Chapman TheJungle is Neutral (1950).

  • The history of a battle is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost; but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference.

    - Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
      Of the Battle of Waterloo. Letter, 8 Aug.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Learn more about individual

link/cite print suggestion box