Quotes About Independence

When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around.

To live fully, one must be free, but to be free one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. How's that for a paradox?

Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense. Alone, the world offers itself freely to us. To be unmasked, it has no choice.

The trouble with you is that the only way you can communicate is through art. You've never learned to communicate your feelings to a man. You don't even want to communicate in a relationship. You think that if you open up to love, you'll lose your independence or your self-expression or creativity or whatever you call all that passionate, wonderful stuff that makes you feel alive inside.

Be your own flying saucer! Rescue yourself!

A person's looking for a simple truth to live by, there it is. CHOICE. To refuse to passively accept what we've been handed by nature or society, but to choose for ourselves. CHOICE. That's the difference between emptiness and substance, between a life actually lived and a wimpy shadow cast on an office wall.

I'm an outlaw, not a hero. I never intended to rescue you. We're our own dragons as well as heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.

The illusion of the seventh veil was the illusion that you could get somebody else to do it for you. To think for you. To hang on your cross. The priest, the rabbi, the imam, the swami, the philosophical novelist were traffic cops, at best. They might direct you through a busy intersection, but they wouldn't follow you home and park your car.

It is more important to be free than to be happy.

If a girl wants to grow up to be a cowgirl, she ought to be able to do it, or else this world ain't worth living in.

Indeed, the first step toward becoming a true outlaw is the refusal to be victimized.

It's personal freedom, not hundred dollar bills that lights the soul's cigar.

Most people do not have the guts to direct their own movie - let alone star in it.

Long as you're not afraid, nobody can run your life for you. Remember that. Hell is being scared of things.

true freedom was an internal condition not subject to the vagaries of politics. Freedom could not be owned. Therefore, it could not be appropriated.

Hitchhiking is not a sport. It is not an art. It certainly isn't work, for it requires no particular ability not does it produce anything of value. It's an adventure, I suppose, but a shallow ignoble adventure.

When I was younger, before this layoff which has nearly finished me, I hitchhiked one hundred and twenty-seven hours without stopping, without food or sleep, crossed the continent twice in six days, cooled my thumbs in both oceans and caught rides after midnight on unlighted highways, such was my skill, persuasion, rhythm. I set records and immediately cracked them; went farther, faster than any hitchhiker before or since.

When we feel incomplete, we might search for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we may blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment.

But having acquired a taste for solitude, each of them spent days separate and alone, Leigh-Cheri in the attic, Bernard in the pantry. Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense. Alone, the world offers itself freely to us. To be unmasked, it has no choice.

Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.

Authority is to be ridiculed, outwitted and avoided.

To the domesticated, nomads were an unwelcome reminder of instinct suppressed, liberty compromised, and control unimplemented.

we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.

It's more important to be free than to be happy.