INDIVIDUALISM • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Individualism

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/ˌɪndɪvɪdˈuəlˌɪzəm/ Listen

noun

Individualism n.

The quality of being individual; individuality; personality.

An excessive or exclusive regard to one's personal interest; self-interest; selfishness. "The selfishness of the small proprietor has been described by the best writers as individualism."

The principle, policy, or practice of maintaining individuality, or independence of the individual, in action; the theory or practice of maintaining the independence of individual initiative, action, and interests, as in industrial organization or in government.

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Etymology of 'Individualism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Individualism" Quotes from Famous Books

... in a community is not, as mathematicians would say, always of the same sign. To ignore this is the essential fallacy of the cult called Individualism. But in truth, a general prohibition in a state may increase the sum of liberty, and a general permission may diminish it. It does not follow, as these people would have us believe, that a man is more free where there is least law and more restricted where there is most law. A socialism ...

— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... living, and letting her have her own way, he convinced her with a life-preserver. His widow, like her predecessor of Ephesus, desiring speedy consolation, I fled the city. My Epicureanism and her iron-bound individualism would have clashed. I had played the Battle of Prague a quatre mains sufficiently in my tender childhood. I had no wild yearning ...

— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... the supreme type of that sheer individualism which had burst forth from the restraints of feudalism. He stood alone fighting his commercial contests with persistent personal doggedness. Beneath his occasional benevolence and his religious professions was a wild ardor in the checkmating or bankruptcy of his ...

— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... by which Winstanley deemed the relative merits of Individualism and Communism, as a system of social union, might best be tested, and which he immediately proceeded to defend in the ...

— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... a queer psychological state of mind; the abnormal is an extreme kind of individualism that is probably insane, provided ...

— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

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