Jane Pauley Quotes

Many Americans abhor paternalism. They think that people should be able to go their own way, even if they end up in a ditch. When they run risks, even foolish ones, it isn't anybody's business that they do.

No rebellious heart is ever at ease with paths established by others.

To walk out of his will is to walk into nowhere.

I don't like to make my life like a book.

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

I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.

It is an obvious fact that when an age is torn loose from its moorings and everyone is to some degree thrown on his own, most people can take steps to find and realize themselves.

Life, in both its knowing and its doing, has become today a "free fall," so to say, into the next minute, into the future. So that, whereas, formerly, those not wishing to hazard the adventure of an individual life could rest within the pale of a comfortably guaranteed social order, today all the walls have burst. It is not left to us to chooseto hazard the adventure of an unprecedented life: adventure is upon us, like a tidal wave.

Into every tidy scheme for arranging the pattern of human life, it is necessary to inject a certain dose of anarchism.

I should like [people] to like the purely individual thing in themselves, which makes them act in singleness. and They only like to do the collective thing.

Here's all I know: that the world is uncontrollable. Chaos reigns. That anything and everything might be possible. I won't subscribe to any rational system again. Nothing will bind me.

When there is no one to remind you what society's rules are, and there is nothing to keep you linked to that society, you had better be prepared for some startling changes.

From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.

We talk much more about individualism and liberty than our ancestors. But as so often happens, when anything becomes conscious, the consciousness is compensatory for absence in practice.

The love of freedom is actually an aberration.

Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair.

Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age.

Her own contempt for any forms of pressure society might put on her was so profound and instinctive that she as instinctively despised anyone who paid tribute to them.

I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.

The 'will to power and independence' has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered normal.

The kind of group mentality that we had lived under since the Second World War is starting to erupt, and the craving for individualism is now much stronger. It's not as taboo anymore, as it was when I was younger.

We have all in some degree become anarchistic.

I didn’t want to be like all these socialites – they sit at home, and go to the debutant ball, and marry some rich guy and that’s it. That’s all they do. I wanted to do my own thing so I could buy whatever I want, do whatever I want.

People are never so likely to be wrong as when they are organized. And they never have so little freedom. Perhaps that is why the people at large keep their freedom. People can be manipulated only when they are organized.