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"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."
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"I think, therefore I am an individual... not a drone in a collective. I think, therefore I am... Libertarian."

"In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately springs as a gigantic summation from these hidden source in individuals."

"You don't have freedom because you are a hyphenated American; you have freedom because you are an individual, and that should be protected."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Notice how they'll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once...There's a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They've got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them-because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man."

"Workers of the world unite???? How'bout.... Staunch individualists disperse!!!"

"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."

"Defy the central planners. Upend their designs for your life. Be a staunch individualist. Stand on your rights."
Explore more quotes by Dorothy L. Sayers

"It's disquieting to reflect that one's dreams never symbolize one's real wishes, but always something Much Worse... If I really wanted to be passionately embraced by Peter, I should dream of dentists or gardening. I wonder what unspeakable depths of awfulness can only be expressed by the polite symbol of Peter's embraces?"

"At present we have no clear grasp of the principle that every man should do the work for which he is fitted by nature!"

"Salcombe Hardy groaned: "How long, O Lord, how long shall we have to listen to all this tripe about commercial arsenic? Murderers learn it now at their mother's knee."

"I am concerned only with the proper training of the mind to encounter and deal with the formidable mass of undigested problems presented to it by the modern world. For the tools of learning are the same, in any and every subject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the tools at his command."

"I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something about the writing of detective fiction "from the woman's point of view. To such demands, one can only say "Go away and don't be silly. You might as well ask what is the female angle on an equilateral triangle."

"To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life., 8 September 1935)"

"Don't be so damned discouraging," said Wimsey. "I have already carefully explained to you that this time I am investigating this business. Anybody would think you had no confidence in me.""People have been wrongly condemned before now.""Exactly; simply because I wasn't there.""I never thought of that."

"I suppose one oughtn't to marry anybody, unless one's prepared to make him a full-time job."Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don't look on themselves as jobs but as fellow creatures."

"Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective by a public school education. Despite Parker's admonitions, he was not always able to discount it. His mind had been warped in its young growth by "Raffles" and "Sherlock Holmes," or the sentiments for which they stand. He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox. 'I am an amateur,' said Lord Peter."
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