Quotes About Self-governance

My happiness isn't connected to my husband's or my boss's or my children's behavior. You have control over your own actions, your own well-being.

Each generation has a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its happiness.

It's more important to be free than to be happy.

If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you'd be the first person in the history of the world.

A country of free men is not free if they are owned by somebody else.

We have found, in our country, that when people have the right to make decisions as close to home as possible, they usually make the right decisions.

The question isn't whether you have a good master or a bad master, it's to be your own master. That is the dignity of humanity.

Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.

It is a far greater happiness to obey no one than to rule the whole world.

You need to learn independence. You have to be independent - it builds character.

This state of independence shall be!

I like to be able to do things on my own. I'm a big boy. I can drive myself to an appearance or get on a plane. I like a little bit of independence...

I must have dialogue with the Chinese government, and dialogue requires compromise. Therefore, I'm speaking for genuine self-rule, not for independence.

Ladies, first and foremost: you're on your own. No more rules neatly laid out for you to follow. You have to make up YOUR OWN rules.

The spirit of democracy cannot be superimposed from the outside. It must come from within.

In this day and age, there is a special mandate for every one of us to be in-charge of our lives by sitting at the driver's seat of our lives. Rule your world!

When we thus rule ourselves, we have the responsibilities of sovereigns, not of subjects. We must never exercise our rights either wickedly or thoughtlessly; we can continue to preserve them in but one possible way, by making the proper use of them.

For the most part, the evidence shows that individual Americans do not care a great deal about politics and are rather poorly informed, unstable in their views, and not much interested in participating in the political process. These findings have led some observers to assert that citizens are ill-equipped for the responsibility of self-governance and that public opinion (the will of the majority) should not be the ultimate determinant of what government does.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.

I do not take orders from Washington, and I suggest that no one else should either.

I resent Washington telling states, or the residents of those states, what to do and what to think.

I'm not searching for ways to tell the District of Columbia what to do.

In their rules there was only one clause: Do what you will.