Quotes About Independence

I said it before-the only one who can decide is the person herself. I did all I could. From here on out, it's up to her.

How was she to tie herself to a man without permitting him to imprison her? And was there some means of acquiring things without those things possessing her?

It would seem, from this, that the people of Omanorion had mastered the ultra-civilized art of minding their own business.

But instead of telling him what to think, I taught him how to think. He then reached a bold decision about what to do, on his own.

As I look back on my own life, I recognize that some of the greatest gifts I received from my parents stemmed not from what they did for me—but rather from what they didn't do for me.

There's a planet out there somewhere. Fairly close, I'd guess. A freewheeling planet, not tied to any sun, although I gather that it could insert itself into a solar system any time it wishes." "That would take some doing. It would mess up the orbits of all the other planets." "Not necessarily," said Maxwell. "It wouldn't have to take an orbit in the same plane as the other planets. That would hold down the effect of its being there.

I haven't even had a life I could call my own, and you're ready to slot me into the grand design. Well, I don't think I want to go. I want to be my own design.

Her streak of independence, which had first brought her to this unfriendly city, was in studied defiance of her smothering appetite for security. If she gave in to those loving appeals she knew she would take root in domestic soil and not look up and out again for another year. In which time, what adventures might have passed her by?

Women had always existed: they had lived, a species to themselves, with the demons. But they had wanted playmates: and together they had made men. What an error, what a cataclysmic miscalculation.

There's a little of Dirk Pitt in all of us.

Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society.

We have only one real shot at liberation, and that is to emancipate ourselves from within

Because of the way society sets them up, women never again experience the need to develop independence - until some crisis in later life explodes their complacency, showing them how sadly helpless and undeveloped they've allowed themselves to be.

One strong idea being put forth these days (...) is that women should above all be given choice. (...) But this right to choose whether or not we provide for ourselves has contributed mightily to the female achievement gap. Because they have the social option to stay home, women can - and often do - back off from assuming responsibility for themselves. (...) There is something wrong with this. (...) We want so desperately to believe that we do not have to be responsible for our own welfare.

We compromised on my withdrawal. I didn't. We British don't withdraw from Ireland.

A virgin with a dish of gold, it was said, could walk unmolested from China to Turkey.

I am an aristocrat, Virginian John Randolph would explain decades after the American Revolution. I love liberty; I hate equality.

It began in 1784, when people in the western territories of North Carolina (now eastern Tennessee) became disgusted with Tidewater control. Their solution was pure Borderlander: they created their own sovereign State of Franklin on nobody's permission but their own. They drafted a constitution that prohibited lawyers, clergy, and doctors from running for office, set up a government in the village of Greeneville, and passed laws making apple brandy, animal skins, and tobacco legal tender.

Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with the trees up close but from the outside, from the empty meadow, you see its true limits. Being free had nothing to do with chains or how much space you had. On the plantation, she was not free, but she moved unrestricted on its acres, tasting the air and tracing the summer stars. The place was big in its smallness. Here, she was free of her master but slunk around a warren so tiny she couldn't stand.

Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us.

The Declaration [of Independence] is like a map. You trust that it's right but you only know by going out and testing it yourself.

The way he saw it, living taught you that you didn't have to live the way you'd been taught to live. You came from one place but more important was where you decided to go.

The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no.

Well, imagine you are alone in a room....Are you the best, most special person in the room right now? Yes. That's the gift of being alone.