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Groups are grammatical fictions; only individuals exist, and each individual is different.
Robert Anton Wilson
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Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote emphasizes the importance of individuals over groups, highlighting that true uniqueness lies within each person.

Robert Anton Wilson's quote brings attention to the idea that while society often categorizes people into groups for convenience, it is individuals who have their own distinct identities and experiences. By recognizing that each person is different, we can appreciate the complexities of human nature and the limitations of collective labels.

Themes

IndividualityGroupsIdentityUniquenessPhilosophy

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about the importance of personal identity versus societal expectations.

More from Robert Anton Wilson

My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
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There is no governor anywhere. You are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. If anybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.
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I see anarchism as the theoretical ideal to which we are all gradually evolving to a point where everybody can tell the truth to everybody else and nobody can get punished for it. That can only happen without hierarchy and without people having the authority to punish other people.
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To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.
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The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
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The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics).
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