Henry David Thoreau Quotes

'He who seeks may easily get lost himself. It is a crime to go apart and be alone.' Thus speaks the herd.

Human beings are a social species. We like to hang together in groups, just like wildebeests, just like lions. Wildebeests don't hang with lions because lions eat wildebeests. Human beings are like that. We do what that group does that we're trying to identify with.

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

People are wonderful. I love individuals. I hate groups of people. I hate a group of people with a 'common purpose'. 'Cause pretty soon they have little hats. And armbands. And fight songs. And a list of people they're going to visit at 3am. So, I dislike and despise groups of people but I love individuals. Every person you look at; you can see the universe in their eyes, if you're really looking.

First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined.

Anyone who draws attention to himself as an individual, is viewed with suspicion. We acquired this tendency, of course, from America, and we must resist it: levelling, and imitation of what others are already doing.

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.

One of my worries about America is the epidemic of depression we've been in. One of the possibilities about that is that the 'I' gets bigger and bigger, and the 'we' gets smaller and smaller.

Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together; and when their private activities are resumed, they fly apart again.

The individualism of the Arab has been erased from this society.

In an over-organized society, the individual is altogether crushed out of existence. He gains the whole wealth of social thought around him and loses his own soul.

Not easily may an individual escape the deep slavery of the herd.

I'm interested in the ongoing war between the individual and community. That inner dissent against whatever group is surrounding you. No one wants to cede their selfhood to a group, right? And yet no one can exactly live outside the group, either. Even the most obstinate survivalist probably lives in some telepathic communion with all the other obstinate survivalists out there in the woods.

The revolt against individualism naturally calls artists severely to account, because the artist is of all men the most individual; those who were not have been long forgotten.

Society values cooperation over independence, obedience over individuality, and niceness above all else.

The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

I've always been opposed to groups. I can't believe the doctrine of group is going to work for every single person within the group.

Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.

But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think.

There is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.

There is a growing sense in America that being disconnected is not good. And there's also some people that are staying in their silos and not coming out, but we have to pull them out, and we have to pull ourselves together at some point, I think.

Individualism is going around these days in uniform, handing out the party line on individualism.

People have such a distinctive look to them these days. Whatever image they're doing, a lot of the time it sums up their character a bit. There are not many individual people anymore - they dress the same as their friends. It's a bit weird; everybody is trying to be different, but then they're exactly the same as whatever mob they hang out with.

American individualism, much celebrated and cherished, has developed without its essential corrective, which is belonging.

Men walk almost always in the paths trodden by others, proceeding in their actions by imitation.