I didn’t want to just be another girl singer. I wanted there to be something that set me apart.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that’s the most interesting: the part that doesn’t go according to what you expected.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

Be willing to use yourself to get out there and put the company on the market. If you have to make a fool of yourself, make a fool of yourself, but make sure that you end up on the front pages, not the back pages. In time, it’s possible that your company will stand out from the crowd, and you’ll be successful.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

I’ve never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be that way.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

Sometimes, people can be extraordinarily judgmental and closed-minded to anyone different or special, which is why it’s so hard for young people in this day and age to be comfortable enough in their own skin to not listen to the people picking on them.

And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment.

All ways of living can be sanctified, and for each individual, the ideal way is that to which our Lord leads him through the natural development of his tastes and the pressure of circumstances.

The only thing I know is I ain’t changing my brand. I know what I believe. I’m confident in what I know. And I’m gonna say it. And if folks like it, wonderful. If they don’t like it, I understand.

Our diversity is our strength. What a dull and pointless life it would be if everyone was the same.

I trust my taste. I trust it completely and I always have done, and I’ve always thought it isn’t that different from everybody else’s.

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

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.

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.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

I’ve always felt quite singular, even as a child. That I must stay on track to keep my purpose.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.

You know, I just do whatever feels right to me! And so that’s what you’re gonna get!

If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.

Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.

After winning, most teams become individuals; most teams become complacent.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

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.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

Even as a child, Muhammad Ali got perverse pleasure out of being different. He liked the attention it got him, but most of all he just liked being himself: odd and independent.

The bottom line is that everyone thinks differently.

When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

I dressed more like a pop star, I suppose, rather than the traditional blazer and tall trousers other players went for.

Rather be dead than cool.

Originality is really important.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

I guess if I’m a product, either you’re chocolate, you’re vanilla or you’re butterscotch. You can’t be all three.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

I’ve always been very liberal when it comes to people thinking for themselves.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

It’s very unnatural to be someone for so many people. But of course it’s very nice.

Everybody has their thing they like or don’t like to see. It’s all in your head. That’s why people take their own pictures, because it’s difficult for someone else to capture what you seek.

Everyone is different. Everyone has different teams they’ve played on, coaches they’ve played for.

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

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

What’s wrong with being a boring kind of guy?

The only answer to fear is faith in God, knowing He loves you unconditionally and individually.

As the father of eight children, I’m quite convinced that each individual arrives here with their own unique personality. We are intended here from an invisible held of infinite potentiality. That which has no form, has no boundaries – it’s the I that’s in the ever-changing body.

I’m very free-spirited.

I hope that what you take away from my album is not just the music – which I did want to be fun, and I did want it to be about individuality, but please also take away from it that there’s no dream that’s too big.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

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

The people you choose to have around you make all the difference. My family and close friends keep me grounded. You have to have a mind of your own and a strong head on your shoulders. Cricket is the most important thing to me, so the rest of it pales in comparison.

You learn that there’s no right way to do it, no wrong way to do it. It’s just what you feel comfortable with, to trust that, and don’t let anybody box you in to a certain style of parenting or make you feel a certain way about what your kids do.

I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I’m walking down the street.

There is no such things as ‚best‘ in the world of individuals.