It's quite comforting to me as an individualist that we're not very close to being clones of one other.
The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left.
Only in baseball can a team player be a pure individualist first and a team player second, within the rules and spirit of the game.
A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.
The American Indian was an individualist in religion as in war. He had neither a national army nor an organized church.
I am a rank individualist.
As a confirmed individualist I certainly do not wish to underrate the influence of the individual, for the masses do not lead the individual; rather, in the individual is vested the capacity to lead the masses.
First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined.
The individualist is an atom thinking about himself (Thank God I am not as other men); the communist, too often, is an atom having ecstasies of self-denial (Thank God I am one in a crowd).
To his credit, Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to Washington to do something - to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity.