A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person's instrument; on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations.
A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.
A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.
America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us.
Be content to be what you are, and prefer nothing to it, and do not fear or wish for your last day.
Be yourself, who else is better qualified?
But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal Impulses and preferences.
Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.
Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.
Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.
Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.
Each man must have his ''I''; it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble.
Every man must get to Heaven his own way.
Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do — can love things that no one else can love. We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music. You know what to do.
Everything without tells the individual that he is nothing; everything within persuades him that he is everything.
Except in a few well-publicized instances (enough to lend credence to the iconography painted on the walls of the media), the rigorous practice of rugged individualism usually leads to poverty, ostracism and disgrace. The rugged individualist is too often mistaken for the misfit, the maverick, the spoilsport, the sore thumb.
Follow the crowd and you will never be followed by a crowd.
Follow your own star!
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?
In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.