"Individualistic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Browning differs not only from Tennyson but from the prevailing thought of his age, differs in that his emphasis is individualistic. Like all the other Victorians he dwells on the importance of individual devotion to the service of others, but he believes that the chief results of such effort must be in the development of the individual's character, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... other hand, if Jeffersonian democracy was the representative of all the individualistic tendencies of the later science of political economy, Hamiltonian federalism represented the necessary corrective force of law. It was in many respects a strong survival of colonialism. Together with some of the evil features of colonialism, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... then, it is true, species like the so-called tent caterpillar are met with where numerous larvae spin silken communal nests to which they retire at night and in which they remain to molt. The pupa, like the larva, is individualistic and employs its time in producing the final adult form. The mature individual, however, is constructed almost solely for the greater purpose of perpetuating the species. Indeed the larger silkworm moths do not and cannot ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... and individualistic. He was not as subtle nor as smooth as his confederates. And money was not the only incentive which would drive him to commit crime. He was a gross sensualist, unprincipled and ruthless, and Sanderson's hatred of him was beginning to overshadow ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... means. It has allowed private individuals in odd corners to try experiments in new methods and new appliances, that the general intelligence, such as it was, of the community could not have understood. For all its faults, our present individualistic order compared not simply with the communism of primitive tribes, but even with the personal and largely illiterate control of the mediaeval feudal governments, is a good efficient working method. I don't think a Socialist need quarrel ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... perturbances stupendous drifts set out. In their gigantic power these avalanches crush the particles which impede them, force the resisting medium out of its normal stage, destroy the homogeneity of its constituents, and mass them into individualistic communities whose vibrations play with greater freedom when they synchronise. The homogeneous etheric tendencies recede ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... sufficient care of our individualistic sense, leaving to Education the care of ...
— The New Ideal In Education • Nicholai Velimirovic
... Presbyterian church remained the most prominent as regards the wealth and social standing of its adherents, but the typical frontiersman who professed religion at all became either a Methodist or a Baptist, adopting a creed which was intensely democratic and individualistic, which made nothing of social distinctions, which distrusted educated preachers, and worked under a republican form ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... problems of adapting oneself to one's environment, of insuring healthy families, of starting one's children well in life, of founding new colonies in distant lands, of the cooperative method of conducting business as opposed to the individualistic, of laying up treasure in the bank for future use, of punishing vice and rewarding virtue—these and many other problems of mankind the flowers have worked out with the help of insects, through the ages. To really understand what the wild flowers are doing, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... not interest them. Like many other philosophers, they thought that their own philosophy was the final word on the universe, and they did not contemplate the possibility that important advances in knowledge might be achieved by subsequent generations. And, in any case, their scope was entirely individualistic; all their speculations were subsidiary to the aim of rendering the life of the individual as tolerable as possible here and now. Their philosophy, like Stoicism, was a philosophy of resignation; it was thoroughly pessimistic and therefore ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... Cuchulain, are given with far greater spirit. The hero is indignant that Fergus should think it necessary to warn him against a single opponent, and says roundly that it is lucky no one else came on such an errand. The tone of the older redaction is as a whole rough, animated, individualistic as compared with the smoother, more generalised, less accentuated presentment of the Leinster version. But to conclude from this fact that the older redaction of the actual combat, if we had it in its original fulness instead of in a bald and ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... an extent as was then alleged and widely believed, spring from monarchical feeling. It was due rather to old memories, as pleasant as they were tenacious, that would not be dissociated from England; to the individualistic tendencies of republicanism, alarming to many; and to conservative habits of political thinking, the dread of innovation and of theory. The returned Tories had indeed all become Federalists, which fact, with many others, lent to this attitude ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... important social and religious topics of the day. They were mostly young people, college-bred, learned, artistic and thoughtful, and of high ideals in intellectual acquirement, religion and social life. They were all agreed that there were many evils to be eradicated from society; in what way—individualistic, governmental or socialistic, or by a combination ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... the note of the party man to his individualistic impressionism, and all three are strong apologists of the Revolution. Lamartine extols the Girondins; Blanc sanctifies Robespierre, whom he mistakes for an apostle of socialism; Michelet, as enthusiastic as either, but larger in his views and much more profound as a scholar, sees the ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... know our goal and then strive to attain it. In the lack of definite standards based upon the lessons of the past, our dominant national ideals shift with every shifting wind of public sentiment and popular demand. Are we satisfied with the individualistic and self-centered idealism that has come with our material prosperity and which to-day shames the memory of the men who founded our Republic? Are we negligent of the serious menace that confronts any people when it loses its hold upon those goods of life that are far more precious than commercial ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... entering a new business era, where the old individualistic methods of attaining so-called "success" will be worse than useless. Many of them even now are forbidden by law. All the practices of the "profiteer" and his ilk are discountenanced by far-seeing people. Men of vision perceive ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... trained to solitude in small bands, owing to the geographical exigencies of their northern country, become the founders of the particularist or individualistic nations, Great Britain and the United States among others. Those who had gone south, driven by pressure from behind, follow the Danube to the north and west, find the Rhine, and push on into what is ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... practical, to give it a basis in reality, and to establish it as acceptable to the sound judgment and common sense of all men. It was an application to the interpretation of theological problems of that individualistic spirit which was at the very source of Protestantism. If the individual ought to interpret the Bible for himself, so ought he to accept his own explanation of the dogmas of the church. In so doing, he necessarily becomes ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... state of society is one which will allow each of these so-called equal beings to work out his own happiness as best he can for himself, with the minimum of interference from his fellow-citizens or from the law. Now if, says our author, men were born equal in reality, such an individualistic democracy might perhaps work well enough. But men are not born equal. The root of the difficulty lies here. In the economic sense, as in all others, some men are incomparably more able than the great majority of their ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... conception of "hold-up," the usurer's conception of his right to be bought out of the way, fades. And the process has been enormously enhanced by the various big-scale experiments in temporary socialism that have been forced upon the belligerent powers. Men of the most individualistic quality are being educated up to the possibilities of concerted collective action. My friend and fellow-student Y, inventor and business organiser, who used to make the best steam omnibuses in the world, and who is now making all sorts of things for ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... literary history, because it was the signal for that reaction over the whole field of thought, into which the Revolution drove many of the finest minds of the next generation, by showing the supposed consequences of pure individualistic rationalism." ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... America have the individualistic temperament, and if we cannot make a self-expressive individualism noble, and if we are not men enough to sing up our individualism into the social and the universal, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... folk of South Italy thought of such a phenomenon. Even now, if they saw you carrying an umbrella about in the sunshine, they would cross themselves and perhaps pray for your recovery—perhaps not. Yet Ramage was not mad at all. He was only more individualistic and centrifugal than many people. Having formed by bitter experience a sensible theory—to wit, that sunstroke is unpleasant and can be avoided by the use of an umbrella—he is not above putting it into practice. Let others think and do ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... position of liberalism untainted by socialism—is that it is the duty of the State to see that as far as possible the social inequalities which arise through the individualistic organisation of society are removed or remedied, and that equality of opportunity is secured to each to make the best of his own individual life. In the educational sphere this implies that any obstacles in the way of a man's educating his children should be removed, if and ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... other stocks were open, and that the folly of the investors in bogus companies consisted in not preferring a safe 2-1/2 per cent. to a risky 5 or 10 per cent. But this argument is once more a return to the unsound individualistic view. It was doubtless open to any individual investor of new savings to purchase sound securities at 2-1/2 per cent., but, since the aggregate of such soundly-placed capital would not be increased, this would simply mean the displacement ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... in the colonies it had small {18} strength, and even where it was by law established it remained little more than an official body, the "Governor's church." This tended to widen the gap between the political views of the individualistic dissenting and Puritan sects in the colonies and the ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... nothing but an affair of faith, based either on vague sentiment, or on that vivid sense of the reality of things unseen of which in my second lecture and in the lecture on Mysticism I gave so many examples. It is essentially private and individualistic; it always exceeds our powers of formulation; and although attempts to pour its contents into a philosophic mould will probably always go on, men being what they are, yet these attempts are always secondary ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... start at the beginning; then you'll see who's right. I'm a biochemist by profession. A damned good one, but too individualistic to please the big research centers. They like docile teams—scientific Percherons to pull the big red wagon. So I taught at one jerkwater college after another. Sooner or later my superiors, all dodderers who stopped thinking with sighs ...
— Revenge • Arthur Porges
... socially gifted, can aspire; and that social institutions of tried worth are not lightly to be cast upon the rubbish heap. It is by no means certain that society can afford or that women ought to demand individualistic rights that will put in jeopardy the welfare of the remainder of the family. The average woman has not the strength to carry properly the burden of home cares plus large political and social responsibilities, nor has she the money to employ in the home all the modern improvements ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... of their seniors or advisers as the truest and purest earthly wisdom. Among certain small religious sects, again, such as the Quakers, the duty of 'marrying in' has been strenuously inculcated, and only the stronger-minded and more individualistic members have had courage and initiative enough to disregard precedent, and to follow the internal divine monitor, as against the externally-imposed law of their particular community. Even among wider bodies it is commonly held that Catholics must not ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... human life if the church keeps true to the spirit of the Bible itself. The aspirations of humanity, the longings of masses of men, find utterance in the great popular spiritual demands all the more effectively because such demands override and nullify the insistence of an individualistic point of view which might easily become selfish. We have said that this democratic interpretation is final so long as it keeps itself in line with the biblical purpose. There are some dangers, however, against which we must be on our guard. First is the ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... and then the group of thirty electors chose a deputy to represent the district. The National Assembly was in this way to consist of one hundred and twenty-six members; its deliberations were to be public, the voting individualistic and the majority to prevail. A Commission of twenty-one deputies was to be appointed, who were to frame a draft-Constitution, which after approval by the Assembly was to be submitted to the whole body of the ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... produced a Newton or a Darwin. The Englishman's way was to get up an interest in a subject first; and then, working back from the part of it that specially appealed to his own tastes, to make himself master of the entire field of inquiry. This natural and thoroughly individualistic English method enabled him to arrive at new results in a way impossible to the pedantically educated German—nay, even to the lucidly and systematically educated Frenchman. It was the plan to develop "mere amateurs," I admit; but it was ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... of philosophy, and seemed to show the influence now of Plato, now of Kant, or of German thought as filtered through the brain of Coleridge, he was, like his American master, associate and friend, steadily optimistic, idealistic, individualistic. The teachings of William Ellery Channing a little before, as to the sacred inviolability of the human conscience—anticipating the later conclusions of Martineau—really lay at the basis of the work of most of the Concord ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... self-realization. This theory is, in a way, based on an appeal to experience, as to the effect of property on human character, and it has the virtue of expressing one of the ideals of modern democracy. Altho, in common with various other "natural-rights" theories, it must be deemed too absolute and too individualistic, it contains a far-reaching truth, of which due account must be taken in our ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... bridge-building, but it was conceived as a scientific matter, to be taken in hand by the State, and for the good of the State. But Nietzsche would destroy the State. His Superman appears as individualistic as a "rogue" elephant, a few passages to the contrary notwithstanding. Are we to regard him as a mere lawless egoist, or as something more? We are left in the dark. [Footnote: See the volume, Beyond Good and Evil, "What is Noble?" Sec 265.] But we note that Nietzsche ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... higher. In proportion as the laborers were drawn to the party of revolt did the doctrine of the monarchomachs become liberal. No longer satisfied with the democracy of corporations and castes of the Middle Ages, the people began to dream of the individualistic democracy ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... feasible on the value of the individual to society.[178] As to the means by which this distribution can be made, there will of course be differences of opinion, to discuss which would be outside the province of this volume. Fundamentally, eugenics is anti-individualistic and in so far a socialistic movement, since it seeks a social end involving some degree of individual subordination, and this fact would be more frequently recognized if the movement which claims the name of socialist did not so often allow the wish to believe that a man's environmental change ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... the discipline of adversity, which bred in the consecrated reformer the wisdom, tolerance, and vision so necessary for the success of her task. What they did understand far better than the highly individualistic pioneers was the value of teamwork, which grew in importance as the National American Association expanded far beyond the ability of one person ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... National Executive Committee which told every Socialist to read the St. Louis platform and then act as his conscience dictated. Fine business for a revolutionary mass movement seeking to establish the co-operative commonwealth. No anarchist could be more individualistic. ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... United States, where the individualistic conception of the industrial life has been an inherent part of our national philosophy, the governments, with cautious reservations, have assumed responsibilities which had been carried in normal times by business. Because ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... previous to their contact with the Greeks, astrology as relating to the individual—that is to say, the reading of the stars to determine the conditions under which the individual was born—had no place in the cult of the Babylonians and Assyrians. The individualistic spirit led the Greek to make his gods take note of every action in his life, and his preordained fate might be read in the stars.—"A connecting link between the individual and the movements in the heavens was found in an element which they ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... There was perhaps a time when Mr. Rawjester was more widely known than Mr. Rochester. And certainly Mr. Rochester (to adopt the diction of that other eminent country gentleman, Mr. Darcy) was simply individualistic not only in practice, but in theory. Now any one may be so in practice: but a man who is simply individualistic in theory must merely be an ass. Undoubtedly the Brontes exposed themselves to some misunderstanding ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... hand with entire lack of gift for community action. Woman, it was expected, would display more than her proverbial lack of logic by embracing with enthusiasm state direction and at the same time remain an exemplar of individualistic performance. The Adamistic scheme seems still further to demand for its smooth working that the feminine group show self-abnegation and agree that it is not itself suited to reason ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... time I think it may fairly be asserted that, though the Buddhist religion may have influenced and utilised Japanese art, it has never killed, or indeed affected to any degree, what I may term the individualistic artistic instincts of the nation. Japanese art requires to be closely studied. It is something that grows upon one, and the closer it is studied the greater its influence. To me one of its most pleasing features is what I have termed in the Preface its catholicity. It is not, as ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... has discovered that pride does not lead to enjoyment. I do not know by what extraordinary mental accident modern writers so constantly connect the idea of progress with the idea of independent thinking. Progress is obviously the antithesis of independent thinking. For under independent or individualistic thinking, every man starts at the beginning, and goes, in all probability, just as far as his father before him. But if there really be anything of the nature of progress, it must mean, above all things, the careful study and assumption of the whole of the past. I accuse ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... various menial capacities. It was a strange anachronism in this world where men's more weighty affairs had been so perfectly socialized, to find woman retaining, evidently by men's permission, the individualistic right to ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... fact is to be seen in the expanding ideals of missionary work. When the missionaries first went to the ends of the earth they went to save souls one by one. They went out generally with a distinctly, often narrowly, individualistic motive. They were trying to gather into the ark a few redeemed spirits out of the wreck of a perishing world; they were not thinking primarily of building a kingdom of social righteousness in the earth. Consider, then, the fascinating story of the way the missionaries, whatever may ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... gave—one of your own flesh and blood! There was no such satisfaction to be had out of giving to those who did not belong to you, to those who had no claim on you! Such giving as that was a betrayal of the individualistic convictions and actions of his life, of all his enterprise, his labour, and his moderation, of the great and proud fact that, like tens of thousands of Forsytes before him, tens of thousands in the present, tens of thousands ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the East and the West. Western Christianity, grown upon the soil of a youthful individualism, preferred this or that apostle's personality and dedicated their best temples to him. The aged East, tired of individualistic ambitions, tired of great men, flagellated by the phantom of human greatness, was thirsty for something higher and more solid than any human personality. Adoration of great personalities being the very wisdom of this world, the East stretched its hands to a superhuman ideal, to the ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... the personal relation, and for a long time his interest in her personality as such, combined with his social enthusiasm, was strong enough to keep the bond intact. When, however, his social enthusiasm paled, and his merely individualistic anarchism became stronger, his interest in Marie weakened. The times grew more frequent with him when he doubted the social side of anarchism itself—when this social propaganda seemed as hollow and as unlovely as society itself; and when he saw the weaknesses and vanities of his associates, ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... were wont to hold up "business methods" as the ideal which we were to strive to introduce into political life. Herbert Croly, in "The Promise of American Life," has set forth the reasons why our individualistic democracy—which taught that each man was to rely exclusively on himself, was in no way to be interfered with by others, and was to devote himself to his own personal welfare—necessarily produced the type of business man who sincerely ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the "revolutionary proletariat," we shall find this individualistic instinct quite as strongly developed. It is not the Socialist idea of placing all wealth and property in the hands of the State, but the Anarchist plan of "expropriation," of plunder on a gigantic scale for the benefit of the revolutionary ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... follow that life is consciously a fabric woven of births and the struggle to maintain and develop and multiply lives. I do not suppose a cat or a savage sees it in that light. A cat's standpoint is probably strictly individualistic. She sees the whole universe as a scheme of more or less useful, pleasurable and interesting things concentrated upon her sensitive and interesting personality. With a sinuous determination she evades disagreeables and pursues delights; life is to her quite clearly and simply ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... always busy praying when he had nothing better to do. And so to-night Esther fared to the kitchen, with her red pitcher, passing in her childish eagerness numerous women shuffling along on the same errand, and bearing uncouth tin cans supplied by the institution. An individualistic instinct of cleanliness made Esther prefer the family pitcher. To-day this liberty of choice has been taken away, and the regulation can, numbered and stamped, serves as a soup-ticket. There was quite ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... explain the evolution of man's opposition to this law. The ordinary evolutionist hypothesis, that the tribe would prosper most whose members were least self-seeking, is contradicted by all history. The overbearing, "grabbing," aristocratic, individualistic, unscrupulous races beat the others out of the field. Mr. Huxley, indeed, alleged that the "influence of the cosmic process in the evolution of society is the greater the more rudimentary its civilisation. Social progress means ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... executed. Gogol was above all else the artist. He was not a radical, nor even a liberal. He was strictly conservative. While hating the bureaucracy, yet he never found fault with the system itself or with the autocracy. Like most born artists, he was strongly individualistic in temperament, and his satire and ridicule were aimed not at causes, but at effects. Let but the individuals act morally, and the system, which Gogol never questioned, would work beautifully. This conception caused Gogol to concentrate ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... of North Queensland jungles which have marked individualistic characters is that known as the koel cuckoo, which the blacks of some localities have named "calloo-calloo"—a mimetic term imitative of the most frequent notes of the bird. The male is lustrous black, the female mottled brown, and during most parts of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... old conception of social purpose, as the necessary concomitant of acknowledged rights, did not emerge from the shadows of the Middle Ages; it had been too long forgotten. The new "rights" were exclusively individualistic, in practice, though in the minds of the idealists who formulated them, they had their social aspect. Their promulgation synchronized with the sudden rise and violent expansion of industrialism, and as one country after another followed the lead of England in accepting the new ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... the mere piece of sentimentalism which it may seem to some readers. It connects itself with a definite view of the world and of our moral relations to the same. Those who have done me the honor of reading my volume of philosophic essays will recognize that I mean the pluralistic or individualistic philosophy. According to that philosophy, the truth is too great for any one actual mind, even though that mind be dubbed 'the Absolute,' to know the whole of it. The facts and worths of life need many cognizers to take them in. ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... it rarely and imperfectly. But it is characteristic of all pastoral folk; once established, it coheres and persists under great external stresses; and in early Europe its liability (strong though its structure is) to break up sooner or later into a more individualistic order, was counteracted by the recurrent drift of new grassland peoples westward from one of its principal homes. Grassland Arabia, let us note in passing, has been performing the same function, since ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... For example, their success in the antislavery movement makes the American history of the nineteenth century; in the prohibition movement they were, in the middle decades of that century, almost entirely successful, and while apparently there was a set-back in the twenty years of individualistic feeling which marked the growth of the Democratic party to an equality with its great rival, the movement of late years seems to have taken on renewed strength, probably on account of the so-called negro question ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... constructive social abilities of humanity in the past have been mainly indirect. The main aim set before Christians was to save their souls from eternal woe, to have communion with God now and hereafter, and to live God-fearing lives. It was individualistic religion, concentrated on the life to come. Its social effectiveness was largely a by-product. What, now, would have been the result if Christianity had placed an equally strong emphasis on the Kingdom of God, ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch |
