George Carlin - Network 1976 - Adolf Hitler - Dalai Lama - Edgar J 2011 - Will Hutton - Martin Luther King - Albert Einstein - Ayn Rand - Ron Paul - Rudolf Steiner - Psyphos podcasts - Psyphoria podcasts - The Academy of Ideas -
I don’t like ass kissers, flag wavers or team players. I like people who buck the system. Individualists. I often warn people: ‘Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, ‘There is no ‘I’ in team.’ What you should tell them is, ‘Maybe not. But there is an ‘I’ in independence, individuality and integrity.’ Avoid teams at all cost. Keep your circle small. Never join a group that has a name. George Carlin
It is the individual that’s finished. It is the single solitary human being that’s finished. It is every single one of you out there that’s finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It’s a nation of some two-hundred-odd million transistorised, deodorised, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies ... The whole world is becoming humanoid, creatures that look human but aren’t ... The whole world’s people are becoming mass-produced, programmed, numbered … Network 1976 starring Faye Dunaway & Peter Finch & William Holden & Robert Duvall & Wesley Addy & Ned Beatty & Beatrice Straight & Jordan Charney & William Prince & Lane Smith & Marlene Warfield & Conchata Ferrell et al, director Sidney Lumet, Howard
You are television incarnate, Diana. Indifferent to suffering. Insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death. All the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of Time & Space into split seconds, instant replays. You are madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, pain. And love. ibid.
What is Life? Life is the nation. The individual must die anyway. Beyond the life of the individual is the nation. Adolf Hitler
The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual’s own reason and critical analysis. Dalai Lama
The very essence of our democracy is rooted in a belief of the worth of the individual. Edgar J 2011 starring Leonardo DiCaprio & Judi Dench & Armie Hammer & Naomi Watts & Josh Lucas & Ed Westwick & Dermot Mulroney & Damon Herriman & Jeffrey Donovan & Ed Westwick & Zach Grenier et al, director Clint Eastwood
That world has gone. The anchors have dissolved or are dissolving. There is neither a monetary nor religious anchor. The pound floats; Catholicism is mired in the horrifying sexual antics of its priests; CEOs pay themselves salaries without limits. The great visions of how one might associate with others – in an Empire, a Commonwealth, a socialist economy, a commune, a religious community, a trade union or even a company – have become implausible. We are individualists in a not very sovereign nation state being buffeted around by economic forces beyond our control. We madly find meaning in cults and celebrity, overinvesting in family as the last redoubt of meaning, while reconciling ourselves to fewer public services and cynical companies even while the country is very much richer. Will Hutton, The Baby Boomers and the Price of Personal Freedom
An Individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment: Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others? Martin Luther King
An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law. Martin Luther King
There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth. Martin Luther King
A human being is a part of the whole called by us ‘Universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind. Albert Einstein, letter 12 February 1950, cited and translated Calaprice
The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling. Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual. Albert Einstein
It is only to the individual that a soul is given. Albert Einstein, attributed
The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule. Albert Einstein
Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized. Albert Einstein
I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it. Albert Einstein, reply to letter sent to him July 1953
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. Ayn Rand
You notice things others don’t. You question what others blindly accept. And slowly, people begin to drift away. Psyphos podcast: Schopenhauer: Smart = Alone: Why Society Rejects the Trully Intelligent, Youtube 2025
Deep down you feel a stranger among your own kind. ibid.
What if society just is not built for people like you? ibid.
The more deeply you think, you more alienated you become. ibid.
Your loneliness might be the highest proof of your mind. ibid.
It’s social exile. Because when you can see through the game, you stop playing it. ibid.
Schopenhauer: He believed that life at core was suffering, and that the more conscious you are, the more you feel it. ibid.
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone. ibid.
You see the world for what it is: A dance of illusions powered by unconscious craving. ibid.
You are not broken. You are just awake. ibid.
Because their minds crave depth, muance, ideas, not gossip, repetition or emotional noise. ibid.
This sensitivity is not a super-power, it is a burden. ibid.
Solitude is not just an escape, it’s a reclamation of your mind, of your time, of your energy. ibid.
[Michel de Montaigne]: ‘The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to yourself.’ Psyphoria podcasts: The Art of Not Caring: When You Embrace Uncertainty, Life Becomes Easier, Youtube 2025
Have you ever stopped to think about how much of your anguish comes from your obsession with control? … Internal control: the suffocating need for certainties, to know what will happen tomorrow. ibid.
No more certainties, but a new relationship with what cannot be controlled. ibid.
Montaigne was not an ordinary philosopher … He wrote from within his own skin. ibid.
Montaigne embraced the opposite: he did not know. ibid.
In a time when everyone shouts, he whispers. ibid.
Anxiety is the fear of the unpredictable. ibid.
It’s the desire for life to be different from what it is. ibid.
[Carl Jung]: ‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.’ Psyphoria podcasts: You Must Let Go: Who to Let Go From Someone Who Hurts You
You say that you want to forget, to move on. But tell me, why do you still think about that person every day? ibid.
You miss what you projected on to them: the illusion of love. ibid.
Often what we call love is just our shadow clinging to someone. ibid.
As long as you continue to seek outside what is missing inside, you will be enternally imprisoned by the gaze of the other. ibid.