A Quote by Leonard Read

There is really nothing that can be done except by an individual. Only individuals can learn. Only individuals can think creatively. Only individuals can cooperate. Only individuals can combat statism.
Who are ever taxed? Individuals only. Who have property that can be taxed? Individuals only. Who can give their consent to be taxed? Individuals only. Who are ever taxed without their consent? Individuals only. Who, then, are robbed, if taxed without their consent? Individuals only.
I used to comfort myself with the belief that it was only certain individuals and their peculiar notions that spoilt things for the rest of us. But how many individuals does it take before it's not the individuals who are prejudiced but society itself?
Only individuals can desire and act. The existence of an institution such as government becomes meaningful only through influencing the actions of those individuals who are and those who are not considered as members.
Societies are composed of individuals and are good only insofar as they help individuals to realize their potentialities and to lead a happy and creative life.
Communities don't think, don't believe, don't want, don't have needs, don't have interests and don't make decisions. Only individuals have minds that generate desires and needs - and only individuals can make choices and decisions.
Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind, independent of the prevalent one among the crowds, and in opposition to it - a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. Only an ethical movement can rescue us from barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.
The individual can take initiatives without anybody's permission. Only individuals can think. Only the individual disregards his fears and commits himself exclusively to reforming the human environment.
We are the true architects of our lives. Only we as individuals and individuals alone, carry within us, the inner ability to make any changes to it's blue prints.
I think that bad drama in a relationship has nothing to do with the individuals, it just really has to do with the dynamic that those individuals create.
An Individual, whatever species it might be, is nothing in the Universe. A hundred, a thousand individuals are still nothing. The species are the only creatures of Nature, perpetual creatures, as old and as permanent as it. In order to judge it better, we no longer consider the species as a collection or as a series of similar individuals, but as a whole independent of number, independent of time, a whole always living, always the same, a whole which has been counted as one in the works of creation, and which, as a consequence, makes only a unity in Nature.
Only in a free society do individuals have the best chance to seek virtue, strive for excellence, improve their economic well-being, and achieve personal happiness. The worthy goals of civilization can only be achieved by freedom-loving individuals. When government uses force, liberty is sacrificed and the goals are lost. It is freedom that is the source of all creative energy.
I did not say that language as a completed system emerged in an individual in an instant. But I cannot think of a coherent alternative to the idea that mutations take place in individuals, not communities, so that whatever rewiring of the brain yielded the apparently unique properties of language, specifically recursive generation of hierarchically structured expressions, would therefore have taken place in an individual, and only later been used among individuals who had inherited this capacity.
[T]he power system continues only as long as individuals try to get something for nothing. The day when a majority of individuals declares or acts as if it wants nothing from the government, declares that it will look after its own welfare and interests, then on that day the power elites are doomed.
There are a lot of things we as individuals can't do much about. We can't solve global warming as individuals, or health care problems, but as individuals, most of us can get our kids reading. We can do that.
[Kierkegaard] did not care for large public events because every crowd is in itself an untruth. The only way out is isolation, aloofness. Only the individual is a reality and only the individual is true. Maybe the process of isolation in an individual is one of the most important matters that exists. Is not the whole point of this world for people to separate and become individuals?
If you make a film set in London or in Pakistan or wherever, the thing that interests me is the relationships between individuals - individuals and society, individuals and their family, their girlfriend or boyfriend, it's all the same idea.
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