Quotes About Independence

I had crossed the line. I was free but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land.

I wanted to be a forest ranger or a coal man. At a very early age, I knew I didn't want to do what my dad did, which was work in an office.

You don't have to buy from anyone. You don't have to work at any particular job. You don't have to participate in any given relationship. You can choose.

For most of our history, Americans enjoyed both liberty and security from foreign threats.

Freedom and responsibility aren't interconnected things. They are the same thing.

The American way was for commerce, personal relationships, and religion to be voluntary. No one was forced to participate in something he didn't want.

The communitarians may say you've been enjoying too much individual freedom, and that you must give up some of that for the benefit of the community. But they really mean that they want more power over your life - to force you to subsidize, obey and conform to their choices.

But the objective of freedom is quite realistic; only the methods have been wrong. Don't be awed by the government. Don't confront it directly. Don't organize.

You'll know that whatever happens isn't your problem because you no longer have the responsibility to see that others do what they should.

It's just as unrealistic to merge your property as it is to try to merge your minds. And  property  is  very  important.  The  control  of  your  own  property  is  the  most tangible expression of your freedom.

If I could give you just one thing, I'd want it to be a simple truth that took me many years to learn. If you learn it now, it may enrich your life in hundreds of ways. And it may prevent you from facing many problems that have hurt people who have never learned it. The truth is simply this: No one owes you anything.

Freedom from exploitation is perhaps the easiest freedom to get. All you have to do is to stop participating in any relationship — of any kind — that doesn't suit you. It

A big philosophical breakthrough for me was the realization that my own freedom was not only possible, but far more important than the establishment of a free society.

The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, 'See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk.

You don't have to buy from anyone. You don't have to work at any particular job. You don't have to participate in any given relationship. You can choose.

And when someone accuses you of being selfish, just remember that he's upset only because you aren't doing what he selfishly wants you to do.

To be self-reliant is to recognize that no one else is as concerned about your future as you are and that no one knows as much about you as you do.

As I lie on my couch by the fireplace, looking out from my hillside home at the snow leading down to the ocean, with the right woman in my arms, a glass of Bordeaux beside me and a Puccini opera on the stereo system, knowing that I've earned the pleasure I feel, I'm so glad I didn't let someone else decide what's best for me.

Everyone begins life as a free person. But as time passes, most people accept the prearranged programs and never stop to realize the freedom they possess. They accept standards and situations that are unsuitable to them.

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.

Our people have only the one chance. Our good deeds must be done on this earth in this life. And since there is no one to share the burden with them or to intercede for them they must do it on their own.

Marks usually reward the most docile students, those who conform to their teachers' opinions. There's nothing competitive about learning, it's something everyone does for himself alone.

If you could do this all the time without the system, you wouldn't need the system.

However, it is doubtless true that in a vague way some of these poorer mountaineers, fiercely independent as they were, found something abhorrent in the ownership of one person by another.