Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

I am increasingly an architect of self. I am free to will and choose. I can, through accepting my individuality... become more of my uniqueness, more of my potentiality.

To be an individual is the hardest thing in the world, because nobody likes you to be an individual. Everybody wants to kill your individuality and to make a sheep out of you. Nobody wants you to be on your own.

I valued my independence from an early age and was always something of a individualist … Well, a show-off anyway.

There is no sin worse in life than being boring--and nothing worse than letting other people tell you what to do. I was one of the few heiresses to walk the runway as a model. A lot of people thought that was shocking. Why did I do it? Was it a desperate cry for attention, like the papers said? Hardly. It's not like I need any more attention. Did I do it for money? Of course not. Modeling doesn't pay that well, anyway, unless you're Gisele or Cindy Crawford, or, like Patti Hansen, you get to marry a rock star. I did it because it was fun.

Don't live your life to please other people.

I discovered very early that it wasn't quite enough for me to imitate people.

I refuse to act the way someone expects me to.

I think I'd like to be one of those eccentric 80-year-old women.

What does it mean to be an individual? What does it mean to flourish?

I must be allowed to be as I am.

I've noticed that most people tend to go through life preserving their differences from others.

I wouldn't push my kids to do anything. I want them to be happy, healthy, and I want them to be who they want to be, you know?

I want to be remembered as somebody that tried to respect her integrity as an artist and as a person. And I don't want to be in any box. I don't want to be one thing.

I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.

I'm very big on doing my own thing.

The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.

I don't want to live up to how people expect me to be.

In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew.

I've never been very cookie cutter. If I choose something different from the status quo, it's my responsibility and my choice to live my life that way.

Being cool is being your own self, not doing something that someone else is telling you to do.

I am definitely an individual.

I never do what anyone else is doing. I could walk away from music and become a farmer or do some crochet. The worst thing in life for me is to do something I'm not happy doing.

I never set out to be rich and famous. I wanted to follow my own path.

I just live my life.

I am different than some people would like me to be. I just don't buy into that the personal can be political.