A Quote by T. S. Eliot
A good deal of confusion could be avoided, if we refrained from setting before the group, what can be the aim only of the individual; and before society as a whole, what can be the aim only of the group.
Related Quotes
Any group or "collective," large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the "rights" of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking... A group, as such, has no rights.
Also in contemporary Western society the union with the group is the prevalent way of overcoming separateness. It is a union which the individual self disappears to a large extent, and where the aim is to belong to the heard. If I am like everybody else, if I have no feeling or thoughts which make me different, if I conform in custom, dress, ideas, to the pattern of the group, I am saved: saved from the frightening experience of aloneness.
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me. I don't give a damn for the group, the community, the masses, and so forth.
Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader. Don't fall victim to what I call the 'ready-aim-aim-aim-aim syndrome'. You must be willing to fire.
Through "deprogramming" or cult intervention the only issues that are addressed focus upon the specific group and group involvement. The subject of such an intervention subsequently may leave the group and go on with their life reassuming their own basic individual values and beliefs.
The main aim of pre-season is to get ready for the competitive games and go into those in the best possible fashion on group and individual levels.
Don't fall victim to what I call the ready-aim-aim-aim-aim syndrome. You must be willing to fire.
Do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if you can get no other answer try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourself an aim, a goal, a 'to this end', an exalted and noble 'to this end'.
The spiritual process is always individual. You may sit in a group, but only the individual can evolve, only the individual can liberate himself.
I grew up in a highly political home. My mother was the co-chair of the 300 Group, an organisation whose aim was to get more women MPs into parliament, and she herself stood in the 1987 election, the year before she died.
Women are the only 'oppressed' group that is able to buy most of the $10 billion worth of cosmetics each year; the only oppressed group that spends more on high fashion, brand-name clothing than its oppressors; the only oppressed group that watches more TV.
The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim-for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives -is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.
Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to "society," to the tribe, the state, the nation) and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force - and statism has always been the poltical corollary of collectivism.
It is clear that those constitutions which aim at the common good are right, as being in accord with absolute justice; while those which aim only at the good of the rulers are wrong.
Any group or "collective", large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
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