individuality quotes

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.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

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

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

It never mattered to me that people in school didn’t think that country music was cool, and they made fun of me for it – though it did matter to me that I was not wearing the clothes that everybody was wearing at that moment. But at some point, I was just like, ‚I like wearing sundresses and cowboy boots.‘

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

People should make up their own mind about what they think of me.

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

Would you believe in what you believe in if you were the only one who believed it?

My own eight children all march to the beat of their inner music, and in some cases, it is definitely far away from what I hear. I’ve had to honor their instincts and their choices, and merely guided them out of harm’s way until they could be their own guides.

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.

I have always marched to my own beat, and most frequently, it was inconsistent not only with my own immediate family, but with my culture as well.

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

Don’t try to be like Jackie. There is only one Jackie. Study computers instead.

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

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.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

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

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.

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

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

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.

All of us are in the same place, each with our own rooms, and we were allowed to do whatever we wanted. Which is totally different than college, where they manage your schedule for you. In the NBA, you’re on your own.

I refuse to accept other people’s ideas of happiness for me. As if there’s a ‚one size fits all‘ standard for happiness.

No one tells me what to do with my music. Real. My mom doesn’t tell what to say, how is someone else going to?

I may be no better, but at least I am different.

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.

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.

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

When I arrived, at first a lot of people were like, ‚This kid is different.‘

I feel like when I try to fit in, it comes across as not genuine, and that is not good. I’d rather just do me and have people say, ‚Oh. That’s interesting,‘ than try to fit in.

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

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

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.

‚Born this Way‘ is about being yourself, and loving who you are and being proud.

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don’t care who people are as long as they’re themselves, whatever that is.

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

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

People who truly understand what is meant by self-reliance know they must live their lives by ethics rather than rules.

Honestly, I could care less about other people’s opinions about me.

God made me and broke the mold.

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

My style has always been my own, just like my flow and style.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

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

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.

You don’t have to be somebody different to be important. You’re important in your own right.

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

It’s absolutely normal that different human beings want to go different ways.

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.

Rather be dead than cool.

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

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