Quotes About Self-reliance

Why can a man not act himself, be himself, and think for himself? It seems to me that naturalness alone is power; that a borrowed word is weaker than our own weakness, however small we may be.

Don't wait for anyone to deputize you or authorize you or empower you. You have to just start out with yourself...and put one foot in front of the other.

My survival was up to me. I had nothing and I had no one. What I did have, I told myself, was my mind, my imagination, my memory, my feelings, my spirit. These were important and powerful things.

I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.

Go and preach to all, 'Arise, awake, sleep no more: within each of you there is the power to remove all wants and all miseries. Believe this, and that power will be manifested.

The best way forward is to give more people everywhere greater power to build their own destinies.

I believe absolutely in my own free will and my own power to accomplish - and that is the belief that moves mountains.

you have to come to terms with the fact that you've really only got yourself in life, and if you don't make yourself happy someone else isn't going to make you happy. Too many people clutch onto someone else, looking for security and acceptance.

Sometimes," Al said slowly, "sometimes self-reliance is the key to survival, but other times cooperation

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That's one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.

Always drink upstream from the herd.

The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them is a match.

Never in our history was we able to blame someone else for our troubles.

You can give people a fish; you can teach them how to fish; or you can create the conditions where people would teach themselves to fish.

I'm going to end up like one of those old weirdos who lives in a network of tunnels burrowed through trash - yet I do not fear this.

Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment.

No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.

Het eerste waar Nederlanders aan denken, als ze iets willen verkrijgen dat hun eigen land niet oplevert, is niet het zelf te gaan maken, maar het te zoeken in den vreemde.

Door mijn voetstappen te tellen (...), is het me toch gelukt zonder kompas weer thuis te komen. is dat geen succes? Is dit niet het succes waarop mijn hele leven mij heeft voorbereid?

If you consider yourself a victim, you are not going to have a good life; if, however, you refuse to think of yourself as a victim—if you refuse to let your inner self be conquered by your external circumstances—you are likely to have a good life, no matter what turn your external circumstances take. (In particular, the Stoics thought it possible for a person to retain his tranquility despite being punished for attempting to reform the society in which he lived.)

only when we assume responsibility for our happiness that we will have a reasonable chance of gaining it.

someone who practices Stoic principles "must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys." Furthermore, compared to these joys, pleasures of the flesh are "paltry and trivial and fleeting."6

Epictetus therefore advises us not to seek social status, since if we make it our goal to please others, we will no longer be free to please ourselves. We will, he says, have enslaved ourselves.