Quotes About Self-reliance

The best management is sometimes less management or no management at all. William Coyne, who led 3M's Research and Development efforts for over a decade, believed a big part of his job was to leave his people alone and protect them from other curious executives. As he put it: 'After you plant a seed in the ground, you don't dig it up every week to see how it is doing.

He did not think anyone needed to look after Nynaeve; around Nynaeve, to his mind, other people needed someone to look after them.

Domon would learn; even when a woman needed help, if she did not want it, she made you pay for giving it.

And I will not allow you to think that you make my decisions, or made them. I am myself, not an appendage to you. Now go away. I must finish these arrows if I am to have even a few shafts that will fly true. I do not mean to kill you, and I would not have it happen by accident." Unstopping the glue pot, she bent over the table. "Do not forget to curtsy like a good girl on your way out.

Trust no-one, he thought bleakly. For an instant, he did not know if it was his thought or Lous-Therin's, but in the end he decided it did not matter. Everybody had their own goals, their own desires. Much the best to trust no-one completely except himself. Yet he wondered, with another man oozing through the back of his mind, how far he could trust himself.

Nynaeve always fought anything she had not thought of herself.

Men who tried to stand on their forebears' shoulders rather than their own feet often found themselves shorter by a head.

most of the time he simply inquired what the questioner thought was a good solution and told him to do that. It was seldom he really had to come up with an answer; people knew what to do, they just had this fool notion they had to ask him.

Women do not become exhausted," Haman said

It seemed to Rand like years since there had not been firewood to split. But complaining would not keep the house warm, so he fetched the axe, propped up bow and quiver beside the chopping block, and got to work. Pine for a quick, hot flame, and oak for long burning.

Men were willing to wear the same clothes until they rotted off. Of

Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.

You don't have to go fishing, of course, to fix your motorcycle.

So we navigate mostly by dead reckoning, and deduction from what clues we find. I keep a compass in one pocket for overcast days when the sun doesn't show directions and have the map mounted in a special carrier on top of the gas tank where I can keep track of miles from the last junction and know what to look for. With those tools and a lack of pressure to 'get somewhere' it works out fine and we just about have America all to ourselves.

Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle.

I ought to have guessed that a person like her--a person who you could tell had a deep inner certitude of self which comes from being all of one piece, of not being shreds and patches and old cogwheels held together with pieces of rusty barbed wire and spit and bits of string, like most of us--I ought to have guessed that that kind of person would not be surprised into answering a question she didn't want to answer.

One of your father's modern ideas about parenting is to leave you alone and let you become the man you want to be, not the man he wants you to be.

To live a life dictated by the size of a paycheck is not really living a life. Thinking that a job makes you secure is lying to yourself. That's cruel, and that's the trap I want you to avoid.

Believe in yourself, and start today!

Mind your business. Don't spend your whole life working for someone else.

You must accept the responsibility of being self-made.

Your first step in taking responsibility is to quit blaming others and quit blaming the world.

A problem with school is that you often become what you study. So if you study cooking, you become a chef. If you study the law, you become an attorney, and a study of auto mechanics makes you a mechanic. The mistake in becoming what you study is that too many people forget to mind their own business. They spend their lives minding someone else's business and making that person rich.

Confronting fear, weaknesses, and neediness by choosing our own thoughts is the way out.