Man is, in a certain sense, redeemed by his passions. Redeemed by being something of a rascal. Because if he weren’t, he would be like a stew with no salt in it. The salt, somehow, in something in a large quantity is horrible, but in a certain small quantity… delightful. So everybody has to be salted with a certain amount of unrespectability. Otherwise they are impossible and intolerable.

Albert Einstein
The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.

Aristotle
He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Arthur Schopenhauer
To be alone is the fate of all great minds.

The feeling of self-sufficiency! It is that which restrains those whose personal value is in itself great riches, from such considerable sacrifices as are demanded by intercourse with the world. Ordinary people are sociable and complaisant just from the very opposite feeling;—to bear others’ company is easier for them than to bear their own.

Bertrand Russell
One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.

Carl Jung
Individuation is a philosophical, spiritual, and mystical experience.

Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.

The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual.

Charles Bukowski
Understand me. I’m not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul.

People empty me. I have to get away to refill.

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

I was waiting for something extraordinary to happen but as the years wasted on, nothing ever did unless I caused it.

Confucius
Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.

Ernest Hemingway
The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits.

Epicurus
Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth.

Erich Fromm
Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion the they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking - and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority.

Friedrich Nietzsche
One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a "common good"! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.

Georgia O'Keefe
I decided to accept as true my own thinking.

I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me — shapes and ideas so near to me, so natural to my way of being and thinking.

I can't live where I want to, I can't go where I want to go, I can't do what I want to, I can't even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.

Someone else's vision will never be as good as your own vision of yourself. Live and die with it 'cause in the end it’s all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else. I should have listened to myself.

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Henry David Thoreau
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? 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 which he hears, however measured or far away. We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.

Hermann Hesse
I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.

Hunter S. Thompson
Walk tall, kick ass, love music… and never forget you have come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors!

In a nation of frightened dullards there is a sorry shortage of outlaws, and those few who make the grade are always welcome.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Become who you are. Do what only you can do. Be the master and the sculptor of yourself.

The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.

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.

To live alone one must be either a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both - a philosopher.

George Bernard Shaw
The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them they make them.

George Carlin
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.” Maybe not, but there is an ‘I’ in Independence. Individuality, and integrity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Why should we build our happiness on the opinions of others, when we can find it in our own hearts.

Jiddu Krishnamurti
Learn what you are, not through another but by watching yourself.

There is hope in the individual, in you, not in a system, not in the blueprint of a planned society, not in any religious organization, but in you, the individual.

Michel Foucault
Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order.

The lyricism of marginality may find inspiration in the image of the “outlaw,” the great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order.

Nietzsche was a revelation to me. I felt that there was someone quite different from what I had been taught. I read him with a great passion and broke with my life, left my job in the asylum, left France: I had the feeling I had been trapped. Through Nietzsche, I had become a stranger to all that.

Nikola Tesla
Anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else, that is the greatest accomplishment.

Soren Kierkegaard
Once you label me you negate me.

Thich Nhat Hanh
To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don't need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

Our own life has to be our message.

Vincent van Gogh
A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.

What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

Walt Disney
The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.

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Other Voices

For these sections without caricature the quote comes first, the cited person after. In case you are using text-to-speech be aware.

Take the risk of thinking for yourself , much more happiness , truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.
Christopher Hitchens

Men have been found to resist the most powerful monarchs and to refuse to bow down before them, but few indeed have been found to resist the crowd, to stand up alone before misguided masses, to face their implacable frenzy without weapons and with folded arms to dare a no when a yes is demanded. Such a man was Zola!
Hannah Arendt

Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance.
Henri Bergson

You are the books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, the people you meet, the dreams you have, the conversations you engage in. You are what you take from these. You are the sound of the ocean, the breath of fresh air, the brightest light and the darkest corner. You are a collective of every experience you have had in your life. You are every single day. So drown yourself in a sea of knowledge and existence. Let the words run through your veins and let the colours fill your mind.
Jac Vanek

I only debate with my equals all others I teach
All others, I teach.
John Henrik Clarke

To be yourself is truly a revolutionary act, and I think more and more people should try it, because it's gotten me a pretty cool life.
Lena Waithe

Self-acceptance is truly a heroic act.
Nathaniel Brandon

The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person - without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.
Osho

Millions of people never analyze themselves. Mentally they are mechanical products of the factory of their environment, preoccupied with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, working and sleeping, and going here and there to be entertained. They don’t know what or why they are seeking, nor why they never realize complete happiness and lasting satisfaction. By evading self-analysis, people go on being robots, conditioned by their environment. True self-analysis is the greatest art of progress.
Paramahansa Yogananda

To be free is to be capable of thinking one's own thoughts - not the thoughts merely of the body, or of society, but thoughts generated by one's deepest, most original, most essential and spiritual self, one's individuality.
Rudolf Steiner

I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits.
William S. Burroughs

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