"Meanings concern individuals
and constantly change.

One cannot give meanings to another.

Meaning must be found
by the individual seeker."

Victor Frankl

I think my exile saved my life,
for it inexorably confirmed something
which Americans appear to have
great difficulty accepting.
Which is, simply, this:
A man is not a man
until he is able and willing
to accept his own vision of the world,
no matter how radically this vision
departs from that of others.

James Baldwin.

"The rebel insists that his identity be respected;
he fights to preserve his intellecutal and spiritual integrity
against the suppressive demands of his society.

He must range himself against the group
which represents to him conformism, adjustment,
and the death of his own originality and voice."

Rollo May

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist...
nothing is at last sacred
but the integrity of your own mind."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Because they've moved out of the society
that would have protected them,
they've moved into the dark forest
into the world of fire, and that's to say,
of original experience, that is
experience that has not been interpreted for you,
and that you've got to work out yourself. "

" porque se movieron de la sociedad
que los habría protegido,
se movieron al bosque oscuro
en el mundo del fuego, de la experiencia original,
que es la experiencia
que no se ha interpretado para usted,
y que usted tiene que resolver por si mismo. "

Joseph Campbell

"If a man is to be independent he must stand alone,
and how many men are there who are capable of that?

On the one hand, freedom in the wilderness,
on the other, mankind... the herd is evil smelling,
but it gives warmth."

Romain Rolland

And if everybody says that you are wrong,
then you are one step ahead.

But there is one situation which is better still,
when everyone begins to laugh about you,
then you know you are two steps ahead.

Albert Szent-Gyorgi

"Group activities weaken our will.
They may be a solace to loneliness,
but they do not foster the individual creative will.

Anais Nin

"When a person's involvement in a situation
is based on appearances, expectations
or the standards of others;
when he acts in a conventional manner,
or according to prescribed roles and functions,
when he is concerned with status and approval;
his growth as a creative self is impaired."

Clark Moustakas

"I am convinced that creativity
is apriori to the integrity of universe
and that life is regenerative
and conformity meaningless."

Buckminster Fuller

"If a man is to be independent he must stand alone,
and how many men are there who are capable of that?

On the one hand, freedom in the wilderness,
on the other, mankind... the herd is evil smelling,
but it gives warmth."

Romain Rolland

"There have never been many persons in the world.
There have never been many people
who even knew they had the option
of becoming persons.

Instead our world has always been
insidiously divided between leaders and followers,
idolised elites and anynymous masses...

in neither role do we assert the ideal of personhood;
we only assume prefrabricated identities
bound by custom and function."

Theodore Roszak

"Is is instructive to think
that there is not a single person in this room,
or for that matter in any room in the world,
who at some nicely chosen point in historical time-space,
would not be put to death there and then,
here and now,
by a commonsense majority in righteous rage.

The color of one's creed, necktie, eyes,
thoughts, manners, speech,
is sure to meet somewhere in time or space
with a fatal objection
from a mob that hates that particular tone.

And the more brilliant,
the more unusual the man,
the nearer he is to the stake.

"Stranger" always rhymes with "Danger".

The meek prophet, the enchanter in his cave,
the indignant artist,
the nonconforming little schoolboy,
all share in the same sacred danger.

And this being so, let us bless them,
let us bless the freak;
for in the natural evolution of things,
the ape would perhaps never have become man
had not a freak appeared in the family.

Vladimir Nabokov

On Being a Poet

Quotes on the Courage to Create

Creativity and School

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