Top 436 Rugged Individualism Quotes & Sayings

Explore popular Rugged Individualism quotes.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
Families composed of rugged individualists have to do things obliquely.
The Democrat Party is willing to undermine whatever, if it'll get them back to power and keep them there. The Democrat Party's willing to undermine anything because, never forget: They need a permanent underclass. Do not doubt me. The Democrat Party is threatened by people who learn to take care of themselves. Self-reliance. The Democratic Party is threatened by people who learn rugged individualism.
Call yourself "Colonel" and declare that your fortune was left to you by Dutch burghers from the seventeenth century. Now you're a solid citizen, the embodiment of hard work and rugged individualism. You're no criminal. The criminal is the guy who comes up short, who gets caught, who fails to adopt a respectable cover.
In a lot of places in the United States and certainly even more places around the world, the image of the cowboy has become, for some people, a negative one. The word 'cowboy' implies a strong, stubborn individual whose individualism depends on pulling down other people's individualism.
Individualism is at once an ethical-psychological concept and an ethical-political one. As an ethical-psychological concept, individualism holds that a human being should think and judge independently, respecting nothing more than the sovereignty of his or her mind; thus, it is intimately connected with the concept of autonomy. As an ethical-political concept, individualism upholds the supremacy of individual rights
'Rugged individualism' has meant all the 'individualism' for the masters, while the people are regimented into a slave caste to serve a handful of self-seeking 'supermen.' America is perhaps the best representative of this kind of individualism, in whose name political tyranny and social oppression are defended and held up as virtues; while every aspiration and attempt of man to gain freedom and social opportunity to live is denounced as 'un-American' and evil in the name of that same individuality.
Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. It seeks to show new perspectives and other choices. It is a way to help expand and liberate the consciousness; our experiences, understandings, imaginings, options and thereby our lives.
For all the huffing and blowing we get about rugged individualism, the American spirit and the American experiment always have had at their heart the notion that the government is all of us and that, therefore, the government may keep things in trust for all of us.
Most artists like to think of themselves as rugged individualists, as independent characters. — © Jack Levine
Most artists like to think of themselves as rugged individualists, as independent characters.
We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.
I mean Afghanistan is a very rugged, complicated country.
One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.
I appreciate individualism.
Only the more Rugged Mortals should attempt to Keep Up on Current Literature.
Method Man is a rough, rugged street dude, but all the girls love him.
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. ...Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of Individualism that the world has known. ...Art is Individualism.
Wit will shine Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.
Call me the rap assassinator / rhymes rugged and built like Schwarzenegger
I'm very practical. What I'm reaching for is individualism for women. — © Kathleen Turner
I'm very practical. What I'm reaching for is individualism for women.
In America, you have this kind of individualism and in the West, essentially, you have this individualism - this idea of my own personal fulfillment.
Individualism regards man - every man - as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights - and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.
Individualism and mobility are at the core of American identity
If we return to the two faces of individualism - individualism as the spur of energy, initiative, and imagination; and individualism as the limitless struggle of all against all - it can be seen how the two practices emerge from and limit the extend of the disequilibrating impact of the contradiction involved in the geocultural agenda.
Unlike Marxists, conservatives they don't want to control anything. We believe in individualism, self-reliance, rugged individualism, and we trust people that in free markets and free circumstances they will do the best to improve themselves and their families. We want as few controls on them as possible. We love everybody, and we want the best for everybody, and we believe people should be free to use whatever talent and ambition and desire they have to achieve whatever they want.
Perhaps the seeds of redemption lay not just in perseverance, hard work, and rugged individualism. Perhaps they lay in something more fundamental—the simple notion of everyone pitching in and pulling together.
Except in a few well-publicized instances (enough to lend credence to the iconography painted on the walls of the media), the rigorous practice of rugged individualism usually leads to poverty, ostracism and disgrace. The rugged individualist is too often mistaken for the misfit, the maverick, the spoilsport, the sore thumb.
The moon is very rugged.
Never before has the seductive market way of life held such sway in nearly every sphere of American life. This marketing way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience ... centered primarily around bodily pleasures and status rankings. ... The common denominator is a rugged and ragged individualism and rapacious hedonism in quest of a perennial "high" in body and mind.
Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.
Unrestricted individualism is the law of the beast of the jungle.
So I'll cherish the old rugged cross, Till my trophies at last I lay down; I will cling to the old rugged cross, And exchange it some day for a crown.
Part of the power of Emerson's individualism is his insistence, at crucial moments, that individualism does not mean isolation or self-sufficiency. This is not a paradox, for it is only the strong individual who can frankly concede the sometimes surprising extent of his own dependence.
Individualism is a formidable lie.
In our rough and rugged individualism, we think of gentleness as weakness, being soft and virtually spineless. Not so! Gentleness includes such enviable qualities as having strength under control, being calm and peaceful when surrounded by a heated atmosphere, emitting a soothing effect on those who may be angry or otherwise beside themselves, and possessing tact and gracious courtesy that causes others to retain their self-esteem and dignity. Instead of losing, the gentle gain. Instead of being ripped off and taken advantage of, they come out ahead!
Individualism has come in for an enormous amount of criticism over the years. It still does. It is widely assumed to be synonymous with selfishness...But the main reason why so many people in power have always disliked individualism is because it is individualists who are ever keenest to prevent the abuse of authority.
Experience, the only logic sure to convince a diseased imagination and restore it to rugged health.
We shun the rugged battle of fate where strength is born.
We were rugged individualists in the Navy, but we all had health care.
There is no individualism in Eastern or oral cultures.
No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.
Only the more rugged mortals should attempt to keep up with current literature.
I'm very practical. What I'm reaching for is individualism for women
Montauk is a little more raw and rugged than the other parts of the Hamptons, and I like that.
The church is challenging such negative cultural elements as superstition, rugged individualism, materialism, hedonism, permissiveness and utilitarianism. — © Francis Arinze
The church is challenging such negative cultural elements as superstition, rugged individualism, materialism, hedonism, permissiveness and utilitarianism.
America was built on rugged individualism, and today that has evolved into a culture of narcissism. But God didn't create you to live for you. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to put aside your selfish ambition.
Libertarianism, the political philosophy of rugged individualism, ought to hold a natural appeal to tolerant, anti-statist, free-trade conservatives who deplore the turn taken by the party of Abraham Lincoln toward racial prejudice, authoritarianism, and mercantilism.
[T]he recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain, not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing is to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be.
There's a thrill when you have a hard set, a rugged workout, and you feel it, and you take it, and you go beyond it.
Patriotism is the opposite of selfish individualism.
Individualism is going around these days in uniform, handing out the party line on individualism.
Art = a mad search for individualism.
[The Master] doesn't glitter like a jewel... [but is] as rugged and common as a stone.
In general, democracy and individualism have advanced in spite of and often against specific economic interest. Both democracy and individualism have been based upon financial sacrifice, not gain. Even in Athens, a large part of the 7,000 citizens who participated regularly in assemblies were farmers who had to give up several days' work to go into town to talk and listen.
Our individualism is rooted in our very nature. It is based on conviction born of experience. Equal opportunity, the demand for a fair chance, became the formula of American Individualism because it is the method of American achievement.
The Celts were harder than anyone else, tougher, and rugged. We battered everybody. — © Sheamus
The Celts were harder than anyone else, tougher, and rugged. We battered everybody.
I respect and value the ideals of rugged individualism and self-reliance. But rugged individualism didn't defeat the British, it didn't get us to the moon, build our nation's highways, or map the human genome. We did that together. This is the high call of patriotism.
While I can make no claim for having introduced the term "rugged individualism," I should be proud to have invented it. It has been used by American leaders for over a half-century in eulogy of those God-fearing men and women of honesty whose stamina and character and fearless assertion of rights led them to make their own way in life.
Honor is like an island, rugged and without a beach; once we have left it, we can never return.
When there is no room for individualism in ballparks, then there will be no room for individualism in life.
Radical individualism can be very sad.
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