---
name: "E. E. Cummings on being yourself"
subtitle: "The hardest battle, and never stopping"
date: 2026-07-06
link: "https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/07/05/e-e-cummings-advice/"
linkText: "themarginalian.org"
source: "The Marginalian"
topics: [quotes, general-delight]
tags: [individuality, courage, poetry]
description: "E. E. Cummings on the lifelong fight to be nobody-but-yourself in a world working night and day to make you everybody else."
---

"To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." Cummings wrote it to high-schoolers in 1955, and it has outlived every graduation-card cliché it went on to spawn.
