Quotes About Self-reliance

I am not lonely, living this way, because I have given up expecting that loneliness can be blotted out by anyone else; my loneliness is my own cherished possession and probably my only one." — Martha Gellhorn, in a letter to Campbell Beckett, from Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn

One thing time has not removed from me," she wrote to Grover, "the last toughness of youth, and that is to live alone. I am glad of that; I would be scared to death if I found I was really needing people." One

when you do not seek or need external approval, you are at your most powerful.

Because you can make decisions for yourself even if they're wrong. Mistakes can be corrected. Life is too short to have everyone else tell you how to live. Make a few mistakes, and learn from them. At least they'll be real, and you'll be living, not just existing.

We're in a very difficult position. We have to exercise the courage to give to ourselves the reverence that the people around us can't and won't be able to provide. This decision is frightening, because it feels like we're going against the common social reality and inventing our own—and this is indeed exactly what we're doing—because our common social reality is lacking and ailing.

Never underestimate yourself

Take care of your common sense, and your dignity will take care of itsself

I'm pretty horrible at relationships and haven't been in many long-term ones. Leaving and moving on - returning to a familiar sense of self-reliance and autonomy - is what I know that feeling is as comfortable and comforting as it might be for a different kind of person to stay.

Maybe no man is an island, but some sure look like one.

But the main thing I've learned, I learned all by myself, no help needed. I learned not to get my tongue pierced. Because if you're getting it pierced for the reason why I think you're getting it pierced and you're not good at that thing to begin with, no little piece of jewelry is going to save the day.

I'm not a damsel and there is no distress

no one can ever save someone else, you know? We can only save ourselves. You know that, don't you?

People tell you the world looks a certain way. Parents tell you how to think. Schools tell you how to think. TV. Religion. And then at a certain point, if you're lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life.

My life is my own, and the opinions of others don't interest me...

Negro banks, as a rule, have failed because the people, taught that their own pioneers in business cannot function in this sphere, withdrew their deposits.

Philosophers have long conceded, however, that every man has two educators: 'that which is given to him, and the other that which he gives himself. Of the two kinds the latter is by far the more desirable. Indeed all that is most worthy in man he must work out and conquer for himself. It is that which constitutes our real and best nourishment. What we are merely taught seldom nourishes the mind like that which we teach ourselves.

At this moment, then, the Negroes must begin to do the very thing which they have been taught that they cannot do.

In the schools of business administration Negroes are trained exclusively in the psychology and economics of Wall Street and are, therefore, made to despise the opportunities to run ice wagons, push banana carts, and sell peanuts among their own people. Foreigners, who have not studied economics but have studied Negroes, take up this business and grow rich.

The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and do for himself just as the Jews have done in spite of universal persecution.

ANOTHER factor the Negro needs is a new figure in politics, one who will not concern himself so much with what others can do for him as with what he can do for himself. He will know sufficient about the system

History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning.

If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.

There might be a God, Clary, and there might not, but I don't think it matters. Either way we're on our own.

Is this the part where you say if I hurt her, you'll kill me?" "No" Simon said, "If you hurt Clary she's quite capable of killing you herself. Possibly with a variety of weapons.