It never or rarely happens that a republic or monarchy is well constituted, or its old institutions entirely reformed, unless it is only done by one individual.

-Machiavelli, Niccolo'   di Bernardo dei
^17  Discourses on First  Ten Books of Livy.

There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away.

-Mailer, Norman Kingsley
  Cannibals and Christians,'My Hope For  America'.

Denn dem Menschen ist amWiedererkennen gelegen; er m o« chte das Alte im Neuen wiederfinden und das Typische im Individuellen. For man always searches for recognition: he would like to find the old in the new and the ordinary in the individual.

-Mann,Thomas
  Freud und die Zukunft.

It's all honourable enough in its way, but it creates societies which simply cannot sustain any kind of democratic structure. It always leads to totalitarian and corrupt tyrannies† There's no tradition of moral individual courage in Chinese culture.

-Mo,Timothy
  Of Chinese tradition. In The Fiction Magazine, vol.1, no.4.

Aworkof art has no importance whatever to society.It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me. 606

-Nabokov,Vladimir
  Interview in Playboy,  Jan.

   Moralit a« t ist Herden-Instinkt im Einzelnen. Morality is herd instinct in the individual.

-Nietzsche, FriedrichWilhelm
  Die fro«  hliche Wissenschaft ( The Gay Science), section116 (translated by W Kaufmann).

The novel is practicallya Protestant form of art; it is the product of the free mind, of the autonomous individual.

-Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair
  Inside the Whale,'Inside The Whale'.

In all our studies of the brain, no mechanism has been discovered that can force the mind to think, or the individual to believe, anything. The mind continues free. That is a statement I have long considered. I have made every effort to disprove it, without success.

-Penfield,Wilder Graves
  SecondThoughts: Science, theArts, and the Spirit.

What matters is not what any individual thinks, but what is true. A teacher who does not equip his pupils with the rudimentary tools to discover this is substituting indoctrination for teaching.

-Peters, Richard Stanley
  Ethics and Education.

For I spend all my time going about trying to persuade you, young and old, to make your first and chief concern not for your bodies nor for your possessions, but for the highest welfare of your souls, proclaiming as Igo,Wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the state.

-Plato
Apology, 30b (translated by H Tredennick).

   Extreme freedom can't be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery, whether for a private individual or for a city.

-Plato
Republic, bk.8, 564a (translated by G M A Grube, revised by C D C Reeve).

   The remarkable legion of the unremarked, whose individual opinions are not colorful or different enough to make news, but whose collective opinion, when crystallized, can make history.

-Safire,William
  Of the so-called'silent majority'. Safire's New Political Dictionary.

Unsterblichkeit der Individualit a« t verlangen heiÞt eigentlich einen Irrtum ins Unendliche perpetuieren wollen. Denn im Grunde ist doch jede Individualit a« t nur ein spezieller Irrtum, Fehltritt, etwas, das besser nicht w a« re, ja wovon uns zuru«  ckzubringen der eigentliche Zweck des Lebens ist. To desire immortality for theindividual isreally thesame as wanting to perpetuate an error for ever; for at bottom every individuality is really only a special error, a false step, something that it would be better should not be, in fact something from which it isthe real purpose of life to bring us back.

-Schopenhauer, Arthur
  DieWelt alsWille undVorstellung (TheWorld asWill and Representation), vol.2, ch.41 (translated by E F J Payne).

The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind ahead, even more than teamwork.

-Sikorsky, Igor Ivan
Quoted in his NewYorkTimes obituary, 27 Oct1972.

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.

-Smiles, Samuel
  Self-Help, ch.1.

Every individual†intends only his own gain, and he is in this as in many other cases led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention† By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the publick good.

-Smith, Adam
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.4, ch.3.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

-Tennyson
  Poems,'Locksley Hall', l.141^2.

There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.

-Thatcher, Margaret HildaThatcher, Baroness
  In Woman's Own, 31 Oct.

Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his Government a Fair Deal.

-Truman, Harry S
  Speech to Congress, 6 Sep.

For sheer courage and endurance, physical and mental, the two men stand together as examples of what toughness the body will find, if the spirit within it is tough; and as very worthy representatives of our national capacity for individual enterprise, which it is hoped even themodern craze for regulating everydetail of our lives will never stifle.

-Wavell, Archibald Percival, 1st Earl
  Of F Spencer Chapman andT E Lawrence. Quoted in foreword to F Spencer Chapman TheJungle is Neutral (1950).