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"It was Nietzsche who first made us conscious of the significance of the individual as a term in the evolutionary process-in that part of the evolutionary process which has still to take place."
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"Creator of indifferences is the motto I want for my spirit today. I'd like my life's activity to consist, above all, in educating others to feel more and more for themselves, and less and less according to the dynamic low of collectiveness. To educate people in that spiritual antisepsis which precludes contamination by commonness and vulgarity is the loftiest destiny I can imagine for the pedagogue of inner discipline that I aspire to be. If all who read me would learn " slowly, of course, as the subject matter requires " to be completely insensitive to the other people's opinions and even their glances, that would be enough of a garland to make up for my life's scholastic stagnation."
"Tomorrow you may bring about the destruction of your world. Tomorrow you may sing in Paradise above the smoking ruins of your world-cities. But tonight I would like to think of one man, a lone individual, a man without name or country, a man whom I respect because he has absolutely nothing in common with you - MYSELF. Tonight I shall meditate upon that which I am."
"Society tells me to follow my own truth, but I don't let society tell me what to do. If you need someone to tell you that, chances are you're part of the crowd that will move on to the next fashion that comes around."
"It was a great thing to be a human being. It was something tremendous. Suddenly I'm conscious of a million sensations buzzing in me like bees in a hive. Gentlemen, it was a great thing."
"My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity . . . and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases myself."
"A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others."
"I think, therefore I am an individual... not a drone in a collective. I think, therefore I am... Libertarian."
"What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls"; if the answer is, "But I don't," there is no more to be said."
"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone."
"Defy the central planners. Upend their designs for your life. Be a staunch individualist. Stand on your rights."
Explore more quotes by Herbert Read
"The point I am making is that in the more primitive forms of society the individual is merely a unit; in more developed forms of society he is an independent personality."
"There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, off era a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country."
"The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers, its poets and its artists."
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