Hundertwasser on Identity

Our society is anonymous. It is inhumane, a breeding ground for dictatorship and tyranny because unfortunately everyone tends by nature to lead a life in the herd, a sheep-like existence, thus making it all the easier for the powers that be to keep tabs on us.

The true democratisation of man means that he must now develop further creatively.

Only he who thinks and acts creatively lives.

Our primary goal is to live in tolerance and human dignity while preserving our distinctiveness and identity. Both tolerance and human dignity, as well as preserving our singularity, are existential questions that make up our survival.

Identity is the protection of individual human dignity and self-reliant small-scale activity as a precondition for the autonomous development of art, nature and architecture and, correspondingly, the aspirations of man.

Identity serves to preserve tried-and-true inherited values.

Man is only such when he confesses himself an individual who thinks and acts independently and creatively.

Our real illiteracy is not the ignorance to read and write and not the incapability to repeat other people’s knowledge, but the inability to create.

Do not be afraid to show yourselves as you really are. Have no fear that you will seem somewhat laughable because you never will. Never when you show what you are really like.

Only with creativity can the human race move forward. Individual creativity and individual responsibility for all forms of life, for the true values, are what shape society.

Hundertwasser on Identity, 1966 / 1990