Hugh Kingsmill Quotes

Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.

That all men are alike is exactly what society would like to hear. It considers actual or imagined differences as stigmas indicating that not enough has yet been done; that something has still been left outside its machinery, not quite determined by its totality.

Labels are for cans, not people.

In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized.

A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.

It takes all kinds to make the world go 'round. If everyone was straight-laced and uptight, it would sure be a drag. We need a little tug of war in society.

In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.

If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.

Any society where it's a crime or a hassle to be different is a society based on psychological fascism.

No one enjoys being equal.

I want to show the world that if you want to be a bearded lady you are allowed to do it without being discriminated against.

Since I can remember, being different was always hard around normal people. That's just how it is, whether you have vitiligo, a deformity, or a different way of thinking or dressing. It's going to always be weird for normal people.

All men are born equal, but some of them outgrow it.

For one man who thanks God that he is not as other men there are a thousand to offer thanks that they are as other men, sufficiently as others are to escape attention.

Men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.

The trouble with this world is that everybody has to compromise and conform.

People want you to be ordinary.

Part of me looks at the gay movement now and worries that we're losing our individuality.

Fashion is an imposition, a reign on freedom.

I think political correctness is a moving line.

I grew up in a small town where everyone wanted to be the same or look the same and was afraid to be different.

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

I'm afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn't fit that will become unnecessary.

People don't really think other people are the same.