Quotes About Independence

The important point is that it is [the children's] privilege to decide what they shall think, and not their parents' privilege to impose it by force majeure.

It is in the nature of scientific truths that they are waiting to be discovered, by whoever has the ability to do so. If two different people independently discover something in science, it will be the same truth. Unlike works of art, scientific truths do not change their nature in response to the individual human beings who discover them. This is both a glory, and a limitation, of science.

More generally, if living things didn't work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings, and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.

I'm not trying to please anyone. I'm just trying to write a damn book.

I simply would not accede to being forced into this, and would frequently be kept out of classes because of irreverent comments and mocking this religious stuff. Frankly, it stayed with me to this day. In fact, don't get me going. I'm almost as bad as Richard Dawkins on this issue.

Humans are only one of many things, and all these things long to live, and the highest form of living is freedom: a man to be a man, a cloud to be a cloud, bamboo to be bamboo.

My dad used to say, you young never carry your weight.

I'm not even certain I care to know. Some people were not made to have best friends, and I might be one. Walter might be another, though for different reasons. Acquaintanceship usually suffices for me, which was more or less the one important lesson learned from my Lebanese girlfriend, Selma Jassim, at Berkshire College, since if anything, she believed mutual confidences of almost any kind were just a lot of baloney.

the product of a freed people that have not the spirit to be free.… We

Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

What others believe is not my concern, unless they attempt to force it on me.

Hand over your responses to the man who triggers them, and you have already lost the battle for self. Look beyond, and find yourself there instead.

Mais souvenez-vous de la faiblesse des armes. Ce ne sont que des extensions. Vous êtes le tueur et le destructeur. Vous êtes complet, avec ou sans elles.

When you don't like the laws, you go somewhere they can't touch you. And then you make up some of your own.

I am Friend to Carrion Crows and Wolves. I am Carry Me and Kill with Me, and Die with Me Where the Road Ends. I am not the Honeyed Promise of Length of Life in Years to Come, I am the Iron Promise of Never Being a Slave.

Siempre habrá imbéciles como esos, tragándose dogmas enteros para no tener que pensar por sí mismos.

Any synthetic intelligence can be independent only within the boundaries of the U.N. regulatory charter. The charter is hardwired into my systems, so in effect I have as much to fear from the police as a human does.

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Often, creativity is blocked by our falling in with other people's plans for us. We want to set aside time for our creative work, but we feel we should do something else instead.

Many of us find that we have squandered our own creative energies by investing disproportionately in the lives, hopes, dreams, and plans of others. Their lives have obscured and detoured our own. As we consolidate a core through our withdrawal process, we become more able to articulate our own boundaries, dreams, and authentic goals. Our personal flexibility increases while our malleability to the whims of others decreases. We experience a heightened sense of autonomy and possibility.

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

Seeking to value ourselves, we look to others for assurance. If what we are doing, threatens them, they cannot give it. If what we envision is larger than what they can see, they cannot give support for what it is we are doing.

Our personal flexibility increases while our malleability to the whims of others decreases. We experience a heightened sense of autonomy and possibility.

Cómo iban a poder si su propio hábito de beber es algo a lo que quieren aferrarse? «Saber lo que prefieres, en lugar de decir sumisamente "amén" a lo que el mundo te dice que debieras preferir, significa que has mantenido tu alma con vida».