I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

The assertion that ‚all men are created equal‘ was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.

I am just one human being.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny.

We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

What is past is prologue.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

I talk about myself in the third person all the time. I don’t live my life in the way someone like you does. I live my life completely serving only my work and my fans.

I’ve never lived my life in the opinion of others. I believe I’m a good person. I believe I’m a good mom. But that’s for my kids to decide, not for the world.

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.

Bread without flesh is a good diet, as on many botanical excursions I have proved. Tea also may easily be ignored. Just bread and water and delightful toil is all I need – not unreasonably much, yet one ought to be trained and tempered to enjoy life in these brave wilds in full independence of any particular kind of nourishment.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

By taking responsibility for how you choose to respond to anything or anyone, you’re aligning yourself with the beautiful dance of life.

I think style is being so comfortable and confident in what you’re wearing. That’s what style is, ‚cause everybody’s got different style.

I don’t really have a gimmick or a ‚thing.‘ I’m one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day.

I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.

SEALs are human beings. We may all have the same haircuts, but we aren’t robots. Some SEALs are great people. Some are not great people. Some have done unspeakably terrible things. You’re dealing with different people, different dreams, different desires.

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.

You don’t have to be like everybody else or do things like everybody else. God created you to be a unique individual, and He wants you to be free to be who He made you to be.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Remember: your bosses prefer to keep you in dependent positions. It is in their interest that you do not become self-reliant, and so they will tend to hoard information. You must secretly work against this and seize this information for yourself.

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?

I mean, I never liked being told what to do. It’s one of the reasons I dropped out of school.

I don’t have to be what you want me to be.

I don’t think I would be interested in the climate at all if I had been like everyone else.

Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

We boil at different degrees.

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.

Love is too young to know what conscience is.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

I’m not who people expect me to be. I’m not Henry Kissinger.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

I don’t see any possibility of Britain and the U.S. allowing a sovereign independent Iraq; that’s almost inconceivable.

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.

It’s normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self’s agenda.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

I work hard for the audience. It’s entertainment. I don’t need validation.

I’m not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.

You stand out in the crowd only because you have these many, many carrying you on their shoulders.

I don’t like begging money from producers.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.

How you respond to the challenge in the second half will determine what you become after the game, whether you are a winner or a loser.

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

I don’t want followers.