Quotes About Self-reliance

The police cannot protect the citizen at this stage of our development, and they cannot even protect themselves in many cases. It is up to the private citizen to protect himself and his family, and this is not only acceptable, but mandatory.

Raquel's mother had driven her fiercely to do well in school, such that high academic prowess had been the only option. Others had come upon money by luck, or had relatives acting as patrons. Rob had had none of those things. All he'd had was a home, and a harried home at that, paired with his own drive. What he'd achieved, he'd achieved almost exclusively on his own.

In his evolving view, the fact that he'd gone to those schools and accomplished those things didn't need to complicate what life had once been about: the simplicity of providing for oneself, without expectations.

A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.

We are all either building our own dreams or building somebody else's. To put a sharper point on it, we're either building our own dreams - or building our nightmares.

Hank: As unbelievable as you may find this, Scott, we can do some things without your guidance. Warren: You're right, Hank! Why, did you know I went to the bathroom this morning- Hank: Not without Scott! Warren: Yes!

After all I'd been through, I didn't need to be wiping other people's eyeballs off my cheek.

way counselors would shut someone down when they started arguing that they didn't have to listen, they were going to do it their own way. The counselors would point out that "Your best thinking is what put you here.

You're on your own, like you've always been on your own. You have to keep going forward, until you can't go forward anymore.

There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.

As long as we lean on anything outside ourselves for support, we are going to be insecure. Most of us try to find support by leaning on all sorts of things - gold, books, learning, sensory stimulation - and if these things are taken away, we fall over. To the extent that we are dependent on these external supports, we grow weaker and more liable to upsets and misfortune.

The law of karma says that no matter what context I find myself in, it is neither my parents, nor my science teacher, nor the mailman, but I alone who have brought myself into this state because of my past actions. Instead of trapping me in a fatalistic snare, this gives me freedom. Because I alone have brought myself into my present condition, I myself, by working hard and striving earnestly, can reach the supreme state which is nirvana.

One way to protect yourself is by not needing or wanting anything. If you expect nothing, you cannot be disappointed. And, if you don't want or need anything, you can avoid abusive reactions to your needs.

Never let a man be responsible for your happiness.

To pursue the thing she needed to do, Virginia Woolf wrote, "a woman must have money and a room of her own. ...." I needed money and a backpack.

Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable.

HE WAS SITTING ON THE FLAT STONE THAT SERVED as a doorstep, waiting for his supper to cook. The late sun slanted in long yellow bars across the clearing. The forest beyond was already in shadow. Matt was feeling well pleased with his day. That morning he had shot a rabbit. He had skinned it carefully, stretching the fur against the cabin wall to dry.

Miriam felt astonished at herself. It was a new thing for her to step out so independently. Somehow, in the past month a tough little root of determination had been growing in her. Whether it was strong enough to support the desperate plan she had undertaken she would soon find out.

Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years--I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.

If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian...I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too.

There's a part of me which has always wanted to hear a man say, Let me take care of you forever, and I have never heard it spoken before. Over the last few years, I'd given up looking for that person, learned how to say this heartening sentence to myself, especially in times of fear. But to hear it from someone else now, from someone who is speaking sincerely...

But never delude yourself into believing that you require someone else's blessing (or even their comprehension) in order to make your own creative work.

Let people have their opinions. More than that--let people love their opinions, just as you and I are in love with ours. But never delude yourself into believing that you require someone else's blessing (or even their comprehension) in order to make your own creative work. And always remember that people's judgments about you are none of your business.

I think it's a mighty act of human love to remind somebody that they can accomplish things by themselves, and that the world does not automatically owe them any reward, and that they are not as weak and hobbled as they may believe.