Quotes About Independence

You'll never get over your need until you can walk away from it on your own.

You can't force people to be thankful just because in your mind they seem to benefit from what you're doing… especially when what you're doing is something you would do anyway, even without them as an excuse.

The slave is held most securely when he is held by the chains of his own will and of his own fears, and when he is locked down by his own slavish desires for a comfortable life.

My dad] didn't do much apart from the traditional winning of bread. He didn't take me to get my hair cut or my teeth cleaned; he didn't make the appointments. He didn't shop for my clothes. He didn't make my breakfast, lunch, or dinner. My mom did all of those things, and nobody ever told her when she did them that it made her a good mother.

I do what I want. I'm punk rock.

All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don't you take it away from yourself.

This link was not coincidental: the movement to create university-level courses for women, still barred from the universities, was an integral part of the "social-pedagogical" movement that intensified in the late nineteenth century to create a "free" (vol'nyi) university outside state control, independent of state subsidies, open to both sexes, and free of restrictions by nationality and estate.

Sometimes it's better not to ask-or to listen-when tell you something can't be done. I didn't ask for permission or approval. I just went ahead and did it.

As you start your journey, the first thing you should do is throw away that store-bought map and begin to draw your own.

Kids … when someone's making decisions for you, you can bet that they've also decided to take what's yours.

It was all very well growing old disgracefully and running your umbrella along life's railings, but when you'd annoyed as many people as possible and told yourself you'd thoroughly enjoyed it, you still had to return home to a cold hearth and deal with it on your own.

If your business depends on you, you don't own a business—you have a job. And it's the worst job in the world because you're working for a lunatic!

I just went off for two months traveling around Europe on a motorcycle and pretty much turned my phone off. I did 5 000 miles with my dad. We went through Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Italy... and then I did Spain and France by myself.

Wake up! Don't let them control you. Don't let them impose an identity on you. Don't obey them. Never submit to a prophet or a holy book. Think for yourself. Wear what you like. Eat what you like. Pray when you like. Don't you want to be free rather than a slave? Create your own identity. Create yourself. Because only those who do can become God. Nietzsche, an atheist, came far closer to the True God than any follower of any mainstream religion.

Our way of life is inherently based on masters and slaves. We bow to assorted Gods, like slaves bowing to masters. We bow to monarchs and presidents, to the rich, to celebrities. We never tire of bowing to others and getting on our knees. We are controlled at every turn. Isn't it time to unshackle ourselves, to stand up straight for once? Isn't it time to bring an end to the master-slave dialectic?

Teachers themselves uninterested in art or lacking faith in the ability of students to think for themselves can make art into something baffling or boring for the rest of the student's life.

Knight, of course, felt that anyone's willing assistance tainted the whole thing. Either you are hidden or you're not, no middle ground. He wished to be unconditionally alone, exiled to an island of his own creation, an uncontacted tribe of one.

Christopher Knight, you could argue, is the most solitary known person in all of human history.

I like being alone. My preferred exercise is solo long-distance running, and my job, as a journalist and writer, is often asocial. When life becomes overwhelming, my first thought—my fantasy—is to head for the woods.

He does not care if people fail to understand what he did in the woods. He didn't do it for us to understand.

The solitary is necessarily a man who does what he wants to do," wrote Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk who died in 1968. "In fact, he has nothing else to do. That is why his vocation is both dangerous and despised.

Only Robinson Crusoe got it all done by Friday!

I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television, I always did what I wanted to do, and if I couldn't, I didn't do it. It was a freedom that, these days, young directors starting out don't have.

We make our own rules and lose by them.