Quotes About Independence

His first—and worst—mistake was blindly doing what he was told to do. Without questioning their methods or their motives, he allowed politicians to make the decisions that led to his early demise.

There's just one thing in this life that's better than happiness and that's freedom. It's more important to be free than to be happy.

When we're incomplete, we're always searching 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 blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on—series polygamy—until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment.

It was Jefferson's genius that kept the American Revolution from being sucked into the tunnel faster than it was. Jefferson had red hair. Nothing is implied here.

Was she simply too shallow to suffer indefinitely, or was she too wise to become attached to her suffering, too feisty to permit it to rule her life? She voted for wise and feisty, and walked on, kicking leaves.

I realize that you've always avoided all but the most rudimentary involvements with men, and, I might add, you've been wise.

Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home.

The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devices—after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's.

For you, freedom means leave me alone. For the masses, it means give me a break.

I'd prefer to have dangerous freedom, than have peaceful slavery

He licked his lips. 'Well, if you want my opinion-' 'I don't, ' She said. 'I have my own.

Lonely was much better than alone.

When you gone to get married? You need to have some babies. It'll settle you.' 'I don't want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.

To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.

What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?

She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be - for a woman. And that no one would ever be that version of herself which she sought to reach out to and touch with an ungloved hand. There was only her own mood and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become as intimate with their own selves as she was.

But the picking out, the choosing. Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it. I saw you and made up my mind. My mind.

You don't have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.

True the Black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that while occupying a place on the job market, a place her mate could not get or which his pride would not let him accept.And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

Sweet, she thought. He must think I can't bear to hear him say it. That after all I have told him and after telling me how many feet I have, goodbye would break me to pieces. Ain't that sweet. So long, she murmured from the far side of the trees.

But maybe a man was nothing but a man, which is what Baby Suggs always said. They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely that was, they studied your scars and tribulations, after which they did what he had done: ran her children out and tore up the house. [...] A man ain't nothing but a man,' said Baby Suggs. 'But a son? Well now, that's somebody.

I'm me, she whispered. Me Nel didn't know quite what she meant, but on the other hand she knew exactly what she meant. I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me. Every time she said the word me there was a gathering in her like power, like joy, like fear. Back in bed with her discovery, she stared out the window at the dark leaves of the horse chestnut. Me, she murmured. And then, sinking deeper into the quilts, I want... I want to be... wonderful. Oh, Jesus, make me wonderful.

Look to yourself. You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you. Seek your own land. You young and a woman and there's serious limitation in both, but you are a person too. Don't let Lenore or some trifling boyfriend and certainly no devil doctor decide who you are. That's slavery. Somewhere inside you is that free person I'm talking about. Locate her and let her do some good in the world.