Louis D Brandeis - Margaret Thatcher - Oscar Wilde - Richard Dawkins - John Stuart Mill - Ronald Reagan - Theodore Kaczynski - Margaret Mitchell - A C Grayling - Karl Marx - Terry Goodkind - John Stuart Mill - John D Rockefeller - Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal - e e cummings - Friedrich Nietzsche - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Thomas Jefferson - Vince Lombardi - Soren Kierkegaard - Julianne Davidow - Jane Austen - Ingmar Bergman - Alice Miller - C G Jung - George Eliot - Noam Chomsky - Samuel Johnson - George Orwell - Julian Baggini - Johnny Depp - Jodi Picoult - Robert Ingersoll - Billy Joe Armstrong - David Icke - Grace Jones - Earl Warren - William S Burroughs - George Carlin - Nikita Khrushchev - Rope 1948 - Star Trek: Voyager TV - Huey Long - William Shakespeare - Will Hutton - Clint Eastwood - Dorothy L Sayers - Jeremy Bentham - Reinhold Niebuhr - Karen M Johnson-Weiner - Malcolm X - Eric Hoffer - R D Laing - James V O’Connor - E A Bucchianeri - Adam Curtis TV -
That the individual shall have full protection in person and in property is a principle as old as the common law; but it has been found necessary from time to time to define anew the exact nature and extent of such protection. Political, social, and economic changes entail the recognition of new rights, and the common law, in its eternal youth, grows to meet the demands of society.
The press is overstepping in every direction the obvious bounds of propriety and of decency. Gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious, but has become a trade, which is pursued with industry as well as effrontery. To satisfy a prurient taste the details of sexual relations are spread broadcast in the columns of the daily papers ... The intensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advancing civilization, have rendered necessary some retreat from the world, and man, under the refining influence of culture, has become more sensitive to publicity, so that solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual; but modern enterprise and invention have, through invasions upon his privacy, subjected him to mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily injury. Louis D Brandeis & Warren, The Right to Privacy
There is no such thing as society. Margaret Thatcher
Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals. Oscar Wilde
Individual human beings are there as machines for propagating their genes. Richard Dawkins, Thinking Allowed, BBC
The Selfish Gene never made claims about the selfishness of human psychology ... It’s the selfish gene but not the selfish individual. ibid.
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing. Ronald Reagan
We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions. Ronald Reagan
Our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or behaviour that is inconvenient for the system and this is plausible because when an individual doesn’t fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a cure for a sickness and therefore as good. Theodore Kaczynski
That is the one unforgivable sin in any society. Be different and be damned! Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccentric. A C Grayling, The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life
Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy
There were those who loved liberty, who cried out to live their own lives, to strive, to rise above, to achieve, and those bent on the mindless equality of stagnation brought about through the enforcement of an artificial, arbitrary, gray uniformity – those who wanted to transcend through their own effort, and those who wanted others to think for them and were willing to pay the ultimate price. Terry Goodkind, Faith of the Fallen
Over one’s mind and over one’s body the individual is sovereign. John Stuart Mill
The day of combination is here to stay. Individualism is gone, never to return. John D Rockefeller senior, cited The Economist online April 16th 1998
Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring. Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. e e cummings
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. Friedrich Nietzsche, also attributed to Rudyard Kipling
It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even with the best right, but without being OBLIGED to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some Minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it, nor sympathize with it. And he cannot any longer go back! He cannot even go back again to the sympathy of men! Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority – where he may forget ‘men who are the rule’, as their exception; – exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense. ibid.
Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. Thomas Jefferson
Individual commitment to a team effort – that’s what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilisation work. Vince Lombardi
The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual. Vince Lombardi
Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood. Soren Kierkegaard
Erotic longing is really a longing to merge with something greater than oneself. For every kind of love is a force that holds the promise of taking us beyond the limitations of our individual lives. Julianne Davidow