Rudyard Kipling

1865–1936 · English author & poet · Nobel laureate in Literature, 1907

Rudyard Kipling was an English writer and poet, author of The Jungle Book, Kim, and “If—.” In 1907 he became the first English-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. This individualist passage was attributed to him by journalist Arthur Gordon, who claimed to have interviewed the aging Kipling in 1935, the year before his death.

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“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself”

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