~INDIVIDUALITY~

"The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been." ~Alan Ashley-Pitt

"This above all; to thine own self be true." ~William Shakespeare

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured and far away." ~Henry David Thoreau

"Kites rise highest against the wind--not with it." ~Winston Churchill

"There wouldn't be a sky full of stars if we were all meant to wish on the same one." ~Frances Clark

"No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings." ~William Blake

"To be nobody-but-yourself--in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else--means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." ~E. E. Cummings

"It is paralogism that one thousand human beings are worth more than one; that would be to turn men into animals. The point about being human is that the unit is the highest; a thousand of them count for less." ~Soren Kierkegaard

"It still impresses people as presumptuously and overweeningly arrogant to speak of the single individual, instead of recognizing that absolute humanity means precisely that everyone is a single individual." ~Soren Kierkegaard

"Like a thunderstorm, the genius goes against the wind." ~Soren Kierkegaard

"People unite because they cannot stand being the one." ~Soren Kierkegaard

"There is no one anywhere, and that is why there is error everywhere." ~Soren Kierkegaard

"If I am not myself, who will I be?" ~Pirke Avot

"If you always do what interests you, then at least one person is pleased." ~Katherine Hepburn

"Are you making any resolutions for the new year?"
"Resolutions? ME?? Just what are you implying? That I need to change?? Well, Buddy, as far as I'm concerned, I'm perfect the way I am! For your information, I'm staying like this, and everyone else can just get used to it! If people don't like me the way I am, well, tough beans! It's a free country! I don't need anyone's permission to be the way I want! This is how i am--take it or leave it! By golly, life's too darn short to waste time trying to please every meddlesome moron who's got an idea how I ought to be! I don't need advice! Everyone can just stay out of my face!" ~Bill Watterson (Hobbes; Calvin)

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and
  I took the one less traveled by,
  And that has made all the difference." ~Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

"But before God, the infinite spirit, all the millions who have lived and live now do not form a mass; he sees only individuals." ~Soren Kierkegaard

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone." ~Bill Cosby

"The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character. The only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionaries are philosophers and saints." ~Will Durrant

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson