Quotes About Self-reliance

Beethoven speaking to royalty: "What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

Recently at a party I saw a man rise from his seat each time a woman entered the room. I smiled my encouragement: "You were well brought up," I said. "No," he replied, "I learned by myself.

I thought about how we need to make children feel that there are times in their lives when they need to be alone and quiet and to be able to accept their aloneness.

I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.

There is another reason ever-single women fare even better than previously married women in later life. They mastered the single life long ago. From structuring social events in a culture that caters to couples, to figuring out how to work and get all the tasks of everyday life accomplished when there may or may not be others readily available to do their unfair share, always-single women have been there, done that. It is not a new or daunting challenge.

Most married people can expect a specific other person to be there for them in a way that a single person typically cannot. Does that make married people more mature than single people? Married people are on training wheels. Singles are riding the bikes for grown-ups.

I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, "To hell with you."

The problem is that Americans would like to be independent of the rest of the world ... Except the world ain't that way. Trying to be independent of the rest of the world is to commit suicide.

You only have the right to pursue happiness; you have to catch it yourself.

the Lord helps those who help themselves

When we carry a safety net made of cash, we allow the one made of community to slip through our fingers.

We have been told to ask about everything: Will it leave us free?

without having to turn to their central bank.

Socialism states that you owe me something simply because I exist. Capitalism, by contrast, results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don't give you a product or service you want, I will starve.

No one will do it for you.

Nothing happens by itself... it all will come your way, once you understand that you have to make it come your way, by your own exertions.

We become strongest, I feel, when we have no friends upon whom to lean, or to look for moral gudance

He preferred his own judgments and, if the truth were told, his own company, too. That was how he had always been, even as a boy, always by himself, stravaging the fields or the back streets of the Midlands town where he was born, looking for something and never knowing what, hoping to chance on something, anything at all, that would interest or amuse him.

Nobody is starving on the streets. We've always taken care of them. We take care of our own we always have. It is not the government's responsibility.

I want the government to provide the military so we don't get invaded by somebody and destroyed. I want the government to provide the roads so I can get from point A to B. In terms of taking care of my day to day needs, I want to do that myself. I want my community to do that.

Don't let anyone turn you into a slave. You're a slave if you let the media tell you that sports and entertainment are more important than developing your brain.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.

It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.