112 Quotes Celebrating Individuality

In a world that often encourages conformity, embracing our unique selves can be a powerful act of defiance and self-love. Celebrating individuality isn't just about standing out—it's about recognizing and honoring the distinct qualities that make each of us who we are. Whether it's through creative expression, bold decisions, or quiet reflection, individuality is a cornerstone of personal freedom and authenticity. In this curated collection, we showcase 112 inspiring quotes that celebrate the beauty and strength found in being unapologetically ourselves. Dive in to find words of wisdom that resonate, uplift, and encourage you to celebrate your own unique path.

1. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).” - Mark Twain

2. “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” - Mahatma Gandhi

3. “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself.” - Harvey Fierstein

4. “It never got weird enough for me.” - Hunter S. Thompson

5. “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

6. “I was the walrus, but now I am John...and so my friends, you'll just have to carry on. The dream is over.” - John Lennon

7. “All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. ... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not.” - Nick Hornby

8. “Its hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.” - Dolly Parton

9. “About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all.” - Rita Mae Brown

10. “In order to be irreplaceacle, one must always be different.” - Coco Chanel

11. “All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.” - David Sedaris

12. “But these few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist, it is they who keep the life in those which already existed.” - John Stewart Mill

13. “Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.” - Henry David Thoreau

14. “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” - John F. Kennedy

15. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.” - Robert Frost

16. “Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it.” - Banksy

17. “If I start giving people what they like I'll turn into one of them and I don't want to be one of them I want to be one of me.” - Craig Ferguson

18. “If you are different from the rest of the flock, they bite you” - Vincent O'Sullivan

19. “Everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul’s possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level” - Gustave Flaubert

20. “We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement.” - Hermann Hesse

21. “I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.” - Theodore Roosevelt

22. “Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss...." He turned to me. "But every once in a while, you find someone who's iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare.” - Wendelin Van Draanen

23. “Please, touch me, I pray.” - Jess C. Scott

24. “I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.” - Edith Sitwell

25. “You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fence and a future office building. Damage has been done to your city. You say, ''It happened overnight.'' But of course it didn't. Your pizza parlor, his shoeshine stand, her hat store: when they were here, we neglected them. For all you know, the place closed down moments after the last time you walked out the door. (Ten months ago? Six years? Fifteen? You can't remember, can you?) And there have been five stores in that spot before the travel agency. Five different neighborhoods coming and going between then and now, other people's other cities. Or 15, 25, 100 neighborhoods. Thousands of people pass that storefront every day, each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing.” - COLSON WHITEHEAD

26. “There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.” - Anais Nin

27. “What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.” - Confucius

28. “There are many who consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which they have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings; as a religious bigot, when charged with disregarding the religious feelings of others, has been known to retort that they disregard his feelings, by persisting in their abominable worship or creed. But there is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it; no more than between the desire of a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the right owner to keep it. And a person's taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse. It is easy for any one to imagine an ideal public, which leaves the freedom and choice of individuals in all uncertain matters undisturbed, and only requires them to abstain from modes of conduct which universal experience has condemned. But where has there been seen a public which set any such limit to its censorship? or when does the public trouble itself about universal experience. In its interferences with personal conduct it is seldom thinking of anything but the enormity of acting or feeling differently from itself; and this standard of judgment, thinly disguised, is held up to mankind as the dictate of religion and philosophy, by nine tenths of all moralists and speculative writers. These teach that things are right because they are right; because we feel them to be so. They tell us to search in our own minds and hearts for laws of conduct binding on ourselves and on all others. What can the poor public do but apply these instructions, and make their own personal feelings of good and evil, if they are tolerably unanimous in them, obligatory on all the world?” - John Stuart Mill

29. “To be a member of such a crowd ... is not much to be far removed from solitude; the freedom of everyone is assured by the freedom to which everyone else lays claim. ” - Remy De Gourmont

30. “I'm myself, not a label.” - John Brunner

31. “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” - Bruce Lee

32. “My head’ll explode if I continue with this escapism.” - Jess C. Scott

33. “Why does it scare me to think I might be ordinary? I remember when I started first grade and I could hardly pay attention for fear I wouldn't learn to read and write. I didn't want to be like everyone else. I didn't want to have to learn. I wanted to know everything already” - Margaret Sartor

34. “Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it's not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit, full of books and films you've been to. I'm not afraid of being homesick and having no language to live in. I don't have to be like anyone else. I'm walking on the wall and nobody can stop me.” - Hugo Hamilton

35. “Books turn people into isolated individuals, and once that's happened, the road only grows rockier. Books wire you to want to be Steve McQueen, but the world wants you to be [email protected].” - Douglas Coupland

36. “It may not feel too classy, begging just to eat But you know who does that?Lassie, and she always gets a treat So you wonder what your part is Because you're homeless and depressed But home is where the heart is So your real home's in your chest Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's got villains they must face They're not as cool as mine But folks you know it's fine to know your place Everyone's a hero in their own way In their own not-that-heroic way So I thank my girlfriend Penny Yeah, we totally had sex She showed me there's so many different muscles I can flex There's the deltoids of compassion, There's the abs of being kind It's not enough to bash in headsYou've got to bash in minds Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's got something they can do Get up go out and fly Especially that guy, he smells like poo Everyone's a hero in their own way You and you and mostly me and you I'm poverty's new sheriff And I'm bashing in the slums A hero doesn't care if you're a bunch of scary alcoholic bums Everybody! Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone can blaze a hero's trail Don't worry if it's hard If you're not a friggin 'tard you will prevail Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's a hero in their...” - Joss Whedon

37. “We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those year in the Home of the Students. It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked at us.” - Ayn Rand

38. “Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her milk, while her father frowned and her brother giggled and her mother said calmly, 'She wants her cup of stars.'Indeed yes, Eleanor thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of stars, of course.'Her little cup,' the mother was explaining, smiling apologetically at the waitress, who was thunderstruck at the thought that the mill's good country milk was not rich enough for the little girl. 'It has stars in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of stars because she can see the stars while she drinks her milk.' The waitress nodded, unconvinced, and the mother told the little girl, 'You'll have your milk from your cup of stars tonight when we get home. But just for now, just to be a very good little girl, will you take a little milk from this glass?'Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.” - Shirley Jackson

39. “People say of me, 'She's peculiar.' They do not understand me. If they did they would say so oftener and with emphasis.” - Mary MacLane

40. “She was considered timid and morose. Only in the country, her skin tanned by the sun and her belly full of ripe fruit, running through the fields with Pedro Tercero, was she smiling and happy. Her mother said that that was the real Blanca, and that the other one, the one back in the city, was a Blanca in hibernation.” - Isabel Allende

41. “The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die.” - David Foster Wallace

42. “A man is known by the books he reads.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

43. “Gestalt PrayerI do my thing and you do yours.I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, And you are not in this world to live up to mine.You are you, and I am I,And if by chance we find each other, then it is beautiful.If not, it can't be helped.” - Frederick Perls

44. “We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends--- those whom we obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties, --- even those for whom home holds no dear face, no familiar voice, --- even they have to meet the spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its valleys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its tress--- a mute friend, judge, and inspirer. Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear conscience. All this may seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed very few of us have the will or capacity to look consciously under the surface of familiar emotions.There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp.” - Joseph Conrad

45. “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” - Robert Frost

46. “Taking into account the public's regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.” - Janeane Garofalo

47. “I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein

48. “To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group--a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. This kind of critical and democratic sensibility flies in the face of any policing of borders and boundaries of "blackness", "maleness", "femaleness", or "whiteness".” - Cornel West

49. “Socialism needs to pull down wealth; liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve [them] ... by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the preeminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks ... to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly.” - Winston S. Churchill

50. “I don't fit into any stereotypes. And I like myself that way.” - C. JoyBell C.

51. “We are all equal in the fact that we are all different. We are all the same in the fact that we will never be the same. We are united by the reality that all colours and all cultures are distinct & individual. We are harmonious in the reality that we are all held to this earth by the same gravity. We don't share blood, but we share the air that keeps us alive. I will not blind myself and say that my black brother is not different from me. I will not blind myself and say that my brown sister is not different from me. But my black brother is he as much as I am me. But my brown sister is she as much as I am me.” - C. JoyBell C.

52. “Nobody is so weird others can't identify with them.” - Rebecca Miller

53. “You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it neverRises from the soul, and swaysThe heart of every single hearer,With deepest power, in simple ways.You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,Blowing on a miserable fire,Made from your heap of dying ash.Let apes and children praise your art,If their admiration’s to your taste,But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

54. “Last night I was seriously considering whether I was a bisexual or not but I don’t think so though I’m not sure if I’d like to be and argh I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, if you like a person, you like the person, not their genitals.” - Jess C. Scott

55. “I suppose it’s not a social norm, and not a manly thing to do — to feel, discuss feelings. So that’s what I’m giving the finger to. Social norms and stuff…what good are social norms, really? I think all they do is project a limited and harmful image of people. It thus impedes a broader social acceptance of what someone, or a group of people, might actually be like.” - Jess C. Scott

56. “If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.” - Michel de Montaigne

57. “A fit, healthy body—that is the best fashion statement” - Jess C. Scott

58. “Life is neither static nor unchanging. With no individuality, there can be no change, no adaptation and, in an inherently changing world, any species unable to adapt is also doomed.” - Jean M. Auel

59. “If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively.” - Mel Brooks

60. “Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth - don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.” - Aesop

61. “You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same.” - Jonathan Davis

62. “Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.” - Edward Abbey

63. “Nie, nie ludzie w naszym kraju nie mają umiejętności zrzeszania się i tworzenia wspólnoty, nawet pod sztandarem prawdziwka. To kraj neurotycznych indywidualistów, z których każdy, gdy tylko znajdzie się wśród innych, zaczyna ich pouczać, krytykować, obrażać i okazywać im swoją niewątpliwą wyższość.” - Olga Tokarczuk

64. “The world is not ready for some people when they show up, but that shouldn't stop anyone.” - Ashly Lorenzana

65. “Ja uopšte mislim da najčudniji ljudi izgledaju vrlo konvencionalno, vrlostandardno. Jer čovek koji je zaista čudan iznutra, onaj koji je u dubokomnesporazumu sa svetom koji ga ne prihvata i ne shvata, ne oseća nikakvupotrebu da se ukrašava spolja, da privlači ičiju pažnju. Naprotiv! On želida se sakrije. Ima li čudnijeg ljudskog stvorenja od Kafke, na primer, a onje gotovo čitavog života radio u jednom osiguravajućem društvu u Pragu,ne razlikujući se spolja od ostalih činovnika.” - Momo Kapor

66. “There's always one more way to do things and that's your way, and you have a right to try it at least once.” - Waylon Jennings

67. “The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,It isn't just one of your holiday games;You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatterWhen I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,Such as Victor or Jonathan, or George or Bill Bailey -All of them sensible everyday names.There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -But all of them sensible everyday names.But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -Names that never belong to more than one cat.But above and beyond there's still one name left over,And that is the name that you never will guess;The name that no human research can discover -But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.When you notice a cat in profound meditation,The reason, I tell you, is always the same:His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplationOf the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:His ineffable effableEffanineffableDeep and inscrutable singular Name.” - T.S. Eliot

68. “The novel was born with the Modern Era, which made man, to quote Heidegger, the "only real subject," the ground for everything. It is largely through the novel that man as an individual was established on the European scene. Away from the novel, in our real lives, we know very little about our parents as they were before our birth; we have only fragmentary knowledge of the people close to us: we see them come and go and scarcely have they vanished than their place is taken over by others: they form a long line of replaceable beings. Only the novel separates out an individual, trains a light on his biography, his ideas, his feelings, makes him irreplaceable: makes him the center of everything.” - Milan Kundera

69. “It is not true that everyone is special. It is true that everyone was once special and still possesses the ability to recover it.” - Criss Jami

70. “Joining a sub-culture, any sub-culture, for whatever reason, is as I see it never a legitimate self-expression. It is always a result of sheep mentality; a wish to belong somewhere.” - Varg Vikernes

71. “A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.” - Coco Chanel

72. “My mother finally took me to a child psychologist, who knew exactly what I was, but she just couldn’t accept it and kept trying to tell my folks I was reading their body language and was very observant, so I had good reason to imagine I heard people’s thoughts. Of course, she couldn’t admit I was literally hearing people’s thoughts because that just didn’t fit into her world.” - Charlaine Harris

73. “If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us--through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives--we are each of us unique.” - Oliver Sacks

74. “I just always want to be different - THE EXCEPTION - and this weekend knocked me right back to reality.And the reality is - I AM TRULY BLESSED ..” - Jon-Robert Holden

75. “She was looking for something I could never give her." Again his dark eyes bored into Julia's mind. "You have something of the same about you, young woman. Take my advice: Don't think you will find it in another person. You won't. It's not there. You must find it in yourself.” - Iain Pears

76. “The individuals inside are frequently fighting that their individual voices be heard, while the walls of the place, which are the mask, and the perception, are reluctant to give over to the voices of the individuals. Those in the margins are always trying to get to the center, and those at the center, frequently in the name of tradition, are trying to keep the margins at a distance. Part of the identity of a place is the tension between those in the margins, and those in the center, and they all live behind the walls which wear the tradition.” - Anna Deveare Smith

77. “I want a simple, ordinary life . . . like humans enjoy.” - Deborah Harkness

78. “...it’s just another one of those things I don’t understand: everyone impresses upon you how unique you are, encouraging you to cultivate your individuality while at the same time trying to squish you and everyone else into the same ridiculous mould. It’s an artist’s right to rebel against the world’s stupidity.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

79. “Bei gleicher Umgebung lebt doch jeder in einer anderen Welt.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

80. “If little else, the brain is an educational toy.The problem with possessing such an engaging toy is that other people want to play with it, too. Sometime they'd rather play with yours than theirs. Or they object if you play with yours in a different manner from the way they play with theirs. The result is, a few games out of a toy department of possibilities are universally and endlessly repeated. If you don't play some people's game, they say that you have "lost your marbles," not recognizing that, while Chinese checkers is indeed a fine pastime, a person may also play dominoes, chess, strip poker, tiddlywinks, drop-the-soap or Russian roulette with his brain.” - Tom Robbins

81. “Sem indivíduos, vemos apenas números: mil mortos, cem mil mortos, «as mortes podem chegar a um milhão». Com as histórias individuais, as estatísticas transformam-se em pessoas - mas até isso é mentira, pois as pessoas continuam a sofrer em números que são, em si mesmos, entorpecedores e desprovidos de significado.” - Neil Gaiman

82. “If you’ve got a dozen pitchers, you need to speak 12 different languages.” - Michael Lewis

83. “Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

84. “Emphasizing the crowd means de-emphasizing individual humans in the design of society, and when you ask people not to be people, they revert to bad, mob-like behaviors.” - Jaron Lanier

85. “His thoughts inhabit a different plane from those of ordinary men; the simplest interpretation of that is to call him crazy.” - Juliet Marillier

86. “People enter different paths seeking for happiness and fulfillment. We must respect other people's individuality. Just because they're not on your path doesn't mean they are on the wrong track.” - Ogwo David Emenike

87. “To live in any true sense of the word is to reject others; to accept them, one must be able to renounce, to do oneself violence, to act against one's own nature, to weaken oneself; we conceive freedom only for ourselves - we extend it to our neighbours only at the cost of exhausting efforts; whence the precariousness of liberalism, a defiance of our instincts, a brief and miraculous success, a state of exception, at the antipodes of our deepest imperatives.” - Emil Cioran

88. “I am not a number; I am a free man.” - Patrick McGoohan

89. “It may have been quixotic, but it was magnificent.” - J.M. Barrie

90. “We have a God who is a Creator, not a duplicator.” - Francis Chan

91. “The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.” - John Maynard Keynes

92. “I'd trapped myself in a script.... But to be scripted at all is to be prepackaged, programmed, pinned to a page. Only the unwritten can truly live a life. So who I was, what I was, had to be unwritten.” - David James Duncan

93. “Being human makes us one. Be uniquely ourselves makes us individual." - Nancy S. Mure, Author of Unidentical Twins” - Nancy S. Mure

94. “If you're "one in a million", and the world is full of seven billion people, that means there are seven thousand people just like you.” - Jeff Goins

95. “In fact, being a unique individual is as much of a farce as trying to be like everyone else. Maybe more.” - Nora Raleigh Baskin

96. “Consider the blundering anarchic system of the United States the stupidity of some of its lawmakers, the violent reaction, the slowness of its ability to change. Twenty-five key men destroyed could make the Soviet Union stagger, but we could lose our congress, our president, and our general staff and nothing much would have happened. We would go right on. In fact we might be better for it.” - John Steinbeck

97. “Nothing is the same.” - Silvia Hartmann

98. “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. 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.” - Rudyard Kipling

99. “I can be a better me than anyone can.” - Diana Ross

100. “All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions andmodes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. An education established andcontrolled by the State should only exist, if it exist at all, as one amongmany competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence.” - John Stuart Mill

101. “Not at all. It's why people come. They say it's about looking smart, or beautiful, or professional, but it's not. Gray-haired ladies try to recapture their former brunette. Brunettes want to go blond. Other women go for colors that don't arise innature. Each group thinks it's completely different than the others, but I don't see it that way. I've watched them looking at themselves in the mirror, and they're not interested in conforming or rebelling, they just want to walk out of here feeling like themselves again.” - Antony John

102. “To influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.” - Oscar Wilde

103. “At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.” - Harold Bloom

104. “One thing I've learned in life is that I can speak for myself, that I can fight my own battles. I don't like anyone telling me how I'm supposed to feel or think or what I'm supposed to say.” - Hope Solo

105. “The third gift is Courage. May you speak and act with confidence and use courage to follow your own path.” - Charlene Costanzo

106. “Each imagining himself to be the first last and only alone, whereas he is neither first last nor last nor only not alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.” - James Joyce

107. “To exist is to stand out, away from the background," The Preacher said. "You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence.” - Frank Herbert

108. “We are against ignorance. We feel that you have to educate yourself, no matter what the situation is. People who refuse to educate themselves - people who refuse to find out what something is about, that they're frightened of - find comfort in being ignorant.”--Zeena Schreck Interview for KJTV-1990” - Zeena Schreck

109. “We must resist in-group thinking and practice seeing every soul as a brother or sister in a larger grouping of humans on earth.” - Bryant McGill

110. “Your personal declaration of will is the first step in a seemingly impossible journey.” - Bryant McGill

111. “If knowing yourself and being yourself were as easy to do as to talk about, there wouldn't be nearly so many people walking around in borrowed postures, spouting secondhand ideas, trying desperately to fit in rather than to stand out.” - Warren G. Bennis

112. “I see that if you try to fit someone in a box, she might slip through the seams like water and become her own river.” - Laura Resau