Individual Man Quotes

We judge individual man and women as we do nations and races
by the character of their achievement and by their achievement of character. ~ Edward Abbey

The result of this one-sided patriarchal stance, demonstrable in all areas of life, is an un integrated man who is attacked by his repressed side and often enough overwhelmed by it. This transpires not only in the fate of the individual man as seduction by a "lower" anima, but equally through seduction by a compensatory ideology, for example materialism, to which "spirit" men are especially susceptible.
The man wants to remain exclusively masculine and out of fear rejects the transformative contact with a woman of equal status. Negativizing the Feminine in the patriarchate prevents the man from experiencing woman as a thou of equal but different status, and hence from coming to terms with her. The consequence of the patriarchal male's haughtiness toward women leads to the inability to make any genuine contact with the Feminine, i.e., not only in a real woman but also with the Feminine in himself, the unconscious. Whenever an integral relationship to the Feminine remains undeveloped, however, this means that, due to his fear, the male is unable to break through to his own wholeness that also embraces the Feminine. Thus the patriarchal culture's separation from the Feminine and from the unconscious becomes one of the essential causes for the crisis of fear in which the patriarchal world now finds itself. ~ Erich Neumann

What is possible for individual man is impossible for the masses. ~ G.I. Gurdjieff

In the sciences, the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. ~ Galileo Galilei

Every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and ... it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle, which points always in one direction to his proper path ... He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have every reason to believe that an individual man or woman fluent in several tongues seduces, possesses, remembers differently according to his or her use of the relevant language. ~ George Steiner

[The Soviets] preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth; they are the focus of evil in the modern world. ~ Ronald Reagan

Yet through virtuous living man is further ordained to a higher end, which consists in the enjoyment of God, as we have said above. Consequently, since society must have the same end as the individual man, it is not the ultimate end of an assembled multitude to live virtuously, but through virtuous living to attain to the possession of God. ~ Thomas Aquinas

In every civilization, life grows easier. Men grow lazier in consequence. We have a picture of what happened to the individual Greek. (I cannot look at history, or at any human action, except as I look at the individual.) The Greeks had good food, good witty talk, pleasant dinner parties; and they were content. When the individual man had reached that condition in Athens, when the thought not of giving to the state but of what the state could give to him, Athens' freedom was doomed. ~ Edith Hamilton

We all know the tragedy of the dustbowls, the cruel unforgivable erosions of the soil, the depletion of fish or game, and the shrinking of the noble forests. And we know that such catastrophes shrivel the spirit of the people ... The wilderness is pushed back, man is everywhere. Solitude, so vital to the individual man, is almost nowhere. ~ Ansel Adams

All people and each individual man is called to come into the Church. ~ Pope Pius XII

A race of people is like and individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself. ~ Malcolm X

Once lay down the rule that the job comes first and you throw that job open to every individual, man or woman, fat or thin, tall or short, ugly or beautiful, who is able to do that job better than the rest of the world. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

At the heart of western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man ... is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and abiding practice of any western society. ~ Robert Kennedy

It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that, beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that, beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great public power, on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him: then is he caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Winwood Reade is good upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

It is, I claim, nonsense to say that it does not matter which individual man acted as the nucleus for the change. It is precisely this that makes history unpredictable into the future. ~ Gregory Bateson

Why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world? Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge? Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once? ~ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

The majority of our polities, as Aristotle says, are like the Cyclops, abandoning the guidance of the women and children to each individual man according to his mad and injudicious ideas: hardly any, except the polities of Sparta and of Crete, have entrusted the education of children to their laws. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Wine is one of the most complex of all beverages: the fruit of a soil, climate, and vintage, digested by a fungus through a process guided by the culture, vision, and skill of an individual man or woman. ~ Neel Burton

In the life of the individual man, virtue is the sole good; such things as health, happiness, possessions, are of no account. Since virtue resides in the will, everything really good or bad in a man's life depends only upon himself. He may become poor, but what of it? He can still be virtuous. A tyrant may put him in prison, but he can still persevere in living in harmony with Nature. He may be sentenced to death, but he can die nobly, like Socrates. Therefore every man has perfect freedom, provided he emancipates himself from mundane desires. Stoicism ~ Piper Kerman

Wednesday

Wind and spindles of clouds crowding the peaks from the south. A lone chicken pecks away on the lawn....
To be a concrete man. To be an individual. Not to strive to transform the whole world. To live in the world, changing it only as much as possible from within the reach of my nature. To become real in harmony with my needs, my individual needs.
I do not want to say that collective and abstract thought, that Humanity as such, are not important. Yet a certain balance must be restored. The most modern direction of is one that will rediscover the individual man. ~ Witold Gombrowicz

The Divine may come to life in individual man, may reveal itself from within individual man; but it attains its earthly fullness only where, having awakened to an awareness of their universal being, individual beings open themselves to one another, disclose themselves to one another, help one another; where immediacy is established between one human being and another; where the sublime stronghold of the individual is unbolted, and man breaks free to meet other man. Where this takes place, where the eternal rises in the Between, the seemingly empty space: that true place of realization is community, and true community is that relationship in which the Divine comes to its realization between man and man. These ~ Martin Buber

A new book was not one of a number of similar objects, but was like an individual man, unmatched, and with no cause of existence beyond himself. ~ Marcel Proust

Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression "individual rights"? is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today's intellectual chaos). But the expression "collective rights"? is a contradiction in terms. ~ Ayn Rand

An individual man is a fruit which it cost all the foregoing ages to form and ripen. He is strong, not to do, but to live; not in his arms, but in his heart; not as an agent, but as a fact. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men, in so far as they live in obedience to reason necessarily do only such things as are necessarily good for human nature, and consequently for each individual man. ~ Baruch Spinoza

The history of every individual man should be a Bible. ~ Novalis

It is the individual man in his individual freedom who can mature with his warm spirit the unripe world. ~ Christopher Fry

The individual man tries to escape the race. And as soon as he ceases to represent the race, he represents man. ~ Andre Gide

When the government designates as punishable all play of mind against the state, the moderate liberals come and opine that fun, satire, wit, humor, etc., must have free play anyhow, and genius must enjoy freedom. So not the individual man indeed, but still genius, is to be free. Here the state, or in its name the government, says with perfect right: He who is not for me is against me. ~ Max Stirner

Even more essential, however, is the identification of the individuals in the masses with the "führer." The more helpless the "mass-individual" has become, owing to his upbringing, the more pronounced is his identification with the führer, and the more the childish need for protection is disguised in the form of a feeling at one with the führer. This inclination to identify is the psychological basis of national narcissism, i.e., of the self-confidence that individual man derives from the "greatness of the nation." The reactionary lower middle-class man perceives himself in the führer, in the authoritarian state. On the basis of this identification he feels himself to be a defender of the "national heritage," of the "nation," which does not prevent him, likewise on the basis of this identification, from simultaneously despising "the masses" and confronting them as an individual. The wretchedness of his material and sexual situation is so overshadowed by the exalting idea of belonging to a master race and having a brilliant führer that, as time goes on, he ceases to realize how completely he has sunk to a position of insignificant, blind allegiance.

The worker who is conscious of his skills - he, in short, who has rid himself of his submissive structure, who identifies with his work and not with the führer, with the international working masses and not with the national homeland - represents the opposite of this. He feels himself to be a leader, not on the basis of ~ Wilhelm Reich

Each individual man and each individual country, according to the principles of natural reason, is free from bondage. Consequently, if there is some threat that might infringe upon a country's freedom, then that country should not hesitate even to take up arms against all the countries of the world. ~ Fukuzawa Yukichi

As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages, and the ages explained by the hours. Of the universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Political emancipation is a reduction of man, on the one hand to a member of civil society, an independent and egoistic individual, and on the other hand, to a citizen, a moral person.
Human emancipation will only be complete when the real, individual man has absorbed into himself the abstract citizen; when as an individual man, in his everyday life, in his work, and in his relationships, he has become a species-being; and when he has recognized and organized his own powers (forces propres) as social powers so that he no longer separates this social power from himself as political power. ~ Karl Marx

I took care to replace the Compendium in its correct pamphlet, and in doing so dislodged a slim pamphlet by Grastrom, one of the most eccentric authors in Solarist literature. I had read the pamphlet, which was dictated by the urge to understand what lies beyond the individual, man, and the human species. It was the abstract, acidulous work of an autodidact who had previously made a series of unusual contributions to various marginal and rarefied branches of quantum physics. In this fifteen-page booklet (his magnum opus!), Grastrom set out to demonstrate that the most abstract achievements of science, the most advanced theories and victories of mathematics represented nothing more than a stumbling, one or two-step progression from our rude, prehistoric, anthropomorphic understanding of the universe around us. He pointed out correspondences with the human body-the projections of our sense, the structure of our physical organization, and the physiological limitations of man-in the equations of the theory of relativity, the theorem of magnetic fields and the various unified field theories. Grastrom's conclusion was that there neither was, nor could be any question of 'contact' between mankind and any nonhuman civilization. This broadside against humanity made no specific mention of the living ocean, but its constant presence and scornful, victorious silence could be felt between every line, at any rate such had been my own impression. It was Gibarian who drew it to my attention, ~ Stanisław Lem

What is the purpose of Masonry? One of its most basic purposes is to make good men even better. We try to place emphasis on the individual man by strengthening his character, improving his moral and spiritual outlook, and broadening his mental horizons. We try to impress upon the minds of our members the principles of personal responsibility and morality, encouraging each member to practice in his daily life the lessons taught through symbolic ceremonies in the lodge. One of the universal doctrines of Freemasonry is the belief in the "Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God". The importance of this belief is established by each Mason as he practices the three principle tenets of Masonry: Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth. ~ A. Keith Jones

The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves. ~ Marcel Duchamp

The Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves for the general Good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into the social masonry. ~ H.G.Wells

It even seems as if the ego has not been produced by nature to follow its own arbitrary impulses to an unlimited extent, but to help to make real the totality-the whole psyche. It is the ego that serves to light up the entire system, allowing it to become conscious and thus to be realized. If, for example, I have an artistic talent of which my ego is not conscious, nothing will happen to it. The gift may as well be non-existent. Only if my ego notices it can I bring it into reality. The inborn but hidden totality of the psyche is not the same thing as a wholeness that is fully realized and lived.

One could picture this in the following way: The seed of a mountain pine contains the whole future tree in a latent form; but each seed falls at a certain time onto a particular place, in which there are a number of special factors, such as the quality of the soil and the stones, the slope of the land, and its exposure to the sun and wind. The latent totality of the pine in the seed reacts to these cicumstances by avoiding the stones and inclining toward the sun, with the result that the tree's growth is shaped. Thus an individual pine slowly comes into existence, constituting the fulfillment of its totality, its emergence into the realm of reality. Without the living tree, the image of the pine is only a possibility or an abstract idea. Again, the realization of this uniqueness in the individual man is the goal of the process of individuation. ~ C.G. Jung

Chekhov said: let's put God - and all these grand progressive ideas - to one side. Let's begin with man; let's be kind and attentive to the individual man - whether he's a bishop, a peasant, an industrial magnate, a convict in the Sakhalin Islands, or a waiter in a restaurant. Let's begin with respect, compassion, and love for the individual - or we'll never get anywhere. ~ Vasily Grossman

Men are socialized to trust women until evidence to the contrary surfaces; women are socialized to be suspicious of men until an individual man earns trust. ~ Warren Farrell

They preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth. They are the focus of evil in the modern world ... So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil. ~ Ronald Reagan

There is no happiness for any individual, man or woman, who does not dwell within the broad zone of average. Pandora ~ Lisa Kleypas

Tolstoy isn't the only reason I don't wish to marry," Pandora said. "Whatever your reasons, they are unsound. I will explain to you later why you do wish to marry. Furthermore, you are an unconventional girl, and you must learn to conceal it. There is no happiness for any individual, man or woman, who does not dwell within the broad zone of average. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The individual man, in introspecting the fact of his own consciousness, also discovers the primordial natural fact of his freedom: his freedom to choose, his freedom to use or not use his reason about any given subject. In short, the natural fact of his "free will." He also discovers the natural fact of his mind's command over his body and its actions: that is, of his natural ownership over his self. ~ Murray Rothbard

Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws ... There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased
freedom from the despotism of the majority. ~ H.L. Mencken

It is easier to understand mankind in general than any individual man. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

For know, dear ones, that every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men- and everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one personally for all mankind and every individual man. This knowledge is the crown of life for the monk and for every man. For monks are not a special sort of men, but only what all men ought to be. Only through that knowledge, our heart grows soft with infinite, universal, inexhaustible love. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The energy available for each individual man is his income, and the philosophy which can teach him to be content with penury should be capable of teaching him also the uses of wealth. ~ Frederick Soddy

The individual man is transitory, but the pulse of life and of growth goes on after he is gone, buried under a wreath of magnolia leaves. ~ Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Every mother hopes that her daughter will marry a better man than she did, and is convinced that her son will never find a wife as good as his father did. ~ Martin Andersen Nexo

Very sacred is the vocation of the artist, who has to do directly with the works of God, and interpret the teaching of creation to mankind. All honor to the man who treats it sacredly; who studies, as in God's presence, the thoughts of God which are expressed to him; and makes all things according to the pattern which he is ever ready to show to earnest and reverent genius on the mount. ~ Jason 'J' Brown

40. The gods either have power or they have not. If they have not, why pray to them? If they have, then instead of praying to be granted or spared such-and-such a thing, why not rather pray to be delivered from dreading it, or lusting for it, or grieving over it? Clearly, if they can help a man at all, they can help him in this way. You will say, perhaps, 'But all that is something they have put in my own power.' Then surely it were better to use your power and be a free man, than to hanker like a slave and a beggar for something that is not in your power. Besides, who told you the gods never lend their aid even towards things that do lie in our own power? Begin praying in this way, and you will see. Where another man prays 'Grant that I may possess this woman,' let your own prayer be, 'Grant that I may not lust to possess her.' Where he prays, 'Grant me to be rid of such-and-such a one,' you pray, 'Take from me my desire to be rid of him.' Where he begs, 'Spare me the loss of my precious child,' beg rather to be delivered from the terror of losing him. In short, give your petitions a turn in this direction, and see what comes. ~ Marcus Aurelius

A fool has not stuff enough to make a good man. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

He locked himself up in his sanctuary of art and carried the keys with him at all times. He maintained the social façade for financial security. The more tragedies were shackled to his name, the more demand there was for his public persona to clean up after the family name and showcase his art to overshadow his domestic disasters. His prominent reputation in the limelight of the town kept buzzing while the man behind the infamy withered in privacy. ~ Laura Gentile

Shouldn't we at least be asking whether the transcending of venereal desire that marriage requires of a mostly or entirely 'heterosexual' man who marries for the sake of love, friendship, and raising a family isn't more or less the same as the transcendence required of a man whose venereal desire is 'oriented' mostly or entirely toward men but who restrains these drives, and who marries for the sake of love, friendship and raising a family? Of course, men with little venereal desire for women can't proceed towards marriage driven by such desire. For them, marriage must develop from friendship. But wouldn't it be better if all marriages developed from friendship? ~ Jonathan Mills

And so I learned what solitude really was. It was raw material - awesome, malleable,older than men or worlds or water. And it was merciless - for it let a man become precisely what he alone made of himself. ~ David James Duncan

Assumption of superiority by any person over any other is a sin against God and man. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

If I had been helping the Almighty when he created man, I would have had him begin at the other end, and start human beings with old age. How much better to start old and have all the bitterness and blindness of age in the beginning! ~ Mark Twain

Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm. ~ C. Wright Mills

Life is one, said the Buddha, and the Middle Way to the end of suffering in all its forms is that which leads to the end of the illusion of separation, which enables man to see, as a fact as clear as sunlight, that all mankind, and all other forms in manifestation, are one unit, the infinitely variable appearance of an indivisible Whole. ~ Christmas Humphreys

Girls' education is a human right. And along with its fundamental justice, it promises so much for the individual, for her family, for society, for all of us. ~ Ann Cotton

Mollie?" He placed his hand on her shoulder, willing her to look at him. "Mollie, let's go someplace where we can talk," he said gently. Her entire body stiffened. "I've got work to do," she mumbled. Was it his imagination or did she inch a little closer to the blond man beside her? Zack grasped her elbow and leaned down to whisper in her ear. "Mollie, get your backside off that stool and come outside with me. I'll buy you a pretzel, and you can tan my hide for being late. ~ Elizabeth Camden

A new beer with sweat running down the sides slides into view and Pigpen sidles up beside me grinning like a crazy man. "Everyone's dying to know who you're texting with. It's like you're a twelve-year-old girl chained to that damn cell. Have you started your period yet? ~ Katie McGarry

Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting. But you can go from acting to being a TV personality to being a radio personality to being a writer to being a producer, to just being a visionary, to voiceover work. ~ Kevin Hart

What is a man?
What is a woman?
Why are men and women attracted to each other?
Why do they desire each other?
Love ... what is it? ~ Yuu Watase

For the white man to ask the black man if he hates him is just like the rapist asking the raped, or the wolf asking the sheep, 'Do you hate me?' The white man is in no moral position to accuse anyone else of hate! Why, when all of my ancestors are snake-bitten, and I'm snake-bitten, and I warn my children to avoid snakes, what does that snake sound like accusing me of hate-teaching? ~ Malcolm X

I believe one thing powerfully- that the only creative thing our species has is the individual, lonely mind ... The group ungoverned by individual thinking is a horrible destructive principle. ~ John Steinbeck

A councilor ought not to sleep the whole night through, a man to whom the populace is entrusted, and who has many responsibilities. ~ Homer

We're conditioned in this country to believe that if there's a problem, the black man is usually the culprit. ~ Wesley Snipes

No wonder psychedelics are threatening to an authoritarian religious hierarchy. You don't need faith to benefit from a psychedelic experience, let alone a priest or even a shaman to interpret it. What you need is courage - courage to drink the brew, eat the mushroom, or whatever it is, and then to pay attention, and make of it what you will. Suddenly, the tools for direct contact with the transcendent other (whether you call it God or something else) is taken from the hands of an anointed elite and given to the individual seeker. ~ Dennis McKenna

Friendship is also a vital and wonderful part of courtship and marriage. A relationship between a man and a woman that begins with friendship and then ripens into romance and eventually marriage will usually become an enduring, eternal friendship. ~ Marlin K. Jensen

For the indignant man, and he who perpetually tears and lacerates himself with his own teeth (or, in place of himself, the world, God, or society), may indeed, morally speaking, stand higher than the laughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the more ordinary, more indifferent, and less instructive case. And no one is such a LIAR as the indignant man. 27. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Ghost shook his head as he sat on the very edge of the bed, poised to take flight if need be. The spiral under his hair felt warm, almost painful, but he resisted the urge to rub it. It never helped when he did, and he was not sure what Gerry would do if the man saw it. The Witch had a symbol she called a triskele, the ink a vivid scarlet still, but no male that had ever come for healing bore a mark like hers, or like his. He had never found the words to ask the Witch about it, about why he was marked like a witch. ~ Morwen Navarre

You are the only man I ever met," Tera growled, "who would smash the paws that are trying to free you from certain death. ~ Jim Butcher

Time, tide, and comets waited for no man. ~ Neal Stephenson

Christians believe that God came amongst us as a man, do they not? Yet the Muselmen say he was only a prophet, and that God has no name ... We fight and kill each other so readily, yet if I had been born in the East, would I not believe the stories they believe, and if they had been born here, would they not be Christians? ~ David Clement-Davies

Every black man under the sun are brothers. I don't care if he lives in America, or in Asia or Africa, or in the Isles of the Pacific or the Gulf. ~ Elijah Muhammad

Life was becoming shorter and the thought that he would never stop smoking filled him with a strange satisfaction. Ignoring the warning on the cigarette packet might not be the most flamboyant act of rebellion a man could allow himself, but at least it was one he could afford. ~ Jo Nesbo

At least he now he knew the truth about himself and Zane. Looking raptly into Zane's dark eyes, Ty wondered why he hadn't realized he loved the man earlier. ~ Abigail Roux

Every individual needs revolution, inner division, overthrow of the existing order, and renewal, but not by forcing them upon his neighbors under the hypocritical cloak of Christian love or the sense of social responsibility or any of the other beautiful euphemisms for unconscious urges to personal power. ~ C. G. Jung

It was a movie [The Railway Man] that stayed with me a long time. It's still one of the things I'm most proud of. I got to know the man that I was playing and unfortunately he passed away just before the movie came out. It's one that meant a huge amount to me, and one that I'm particularly proud of. ~ Jeremy Irvine

A dick does not make you a man; so stop showing it around. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

O baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth,
Oppress'd with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I
have not once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet
untouch'd, untold, altogether unreach'd,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and
bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.
I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single
object, and that no man ever can,
Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart
upon me and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all. ~ Walt Whitman