Quotes About Independence

He knew he should burn up the paper plates and utensils too, and dust the furniture and wash out the sinks and the bathtub and toilet, and change the sheets and pillowcase on his bed; but he didn't feel like it. For he was a man and he was alone and these things had no importance to him.

Well, why not? Why not go out? It was a sure way to be free of them.

A sailor without his own ship was like a hermit crab without a shell.

Besdies, to turn me ladylike might have rendered me useless and possibly ornamental.

Dad, I would very much like to plunge off the edge of commonsense existence, at your expense, and become certifiably unemployable.

When removed from their kind, individual human beings can change in remarkable ways .

Independent thought—a power of attraction all its own.

but no one could control Mark Littleberry; the man was fundamentally uncontrollable.

A policy of moving out and doing it, and asking forgiveness afterward, is much better than a policy of asking permission and having it denied.

What decided him (almost invariably) was a college project in which he had occasion to do some independent research—to find out things for himself. Once he discovered the pleasures of this kind of work, he never turned back. He is completely satisfied with his chosen vocation. . . . He works hard and devotedly in his laboratory, often seven days a week.

Often it takes outer authority to send us on the path to our own inner authority.

God has no grandchildren. God only has children," as some have said. Each generation has to make its own discoveries of Spirit for itself. If not, we just react to the previous generation, and often overreact. Or we conform, and often overconform. Neither is a positive or creative way to move forward.

It takes a huge push, much self-doubt, and some degree of separation for people to find their own soul and their own destiny apart from what Mom and Dad always wanted them to be and do.

Throughout his life a case study underachiever, Sully—people still remarked—was nobody's fool, a phrase that Sully no doubt appreciated without ever sensing its literal application—that at sixty, he was divorced from his own wife, carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, estranged from his son, devoid of self-knowledge, badly crippled and virtually unemployable—all of which he stubbornly confused with independence.

At 53, she was through with the foolishness of men's genitals. In fact, it had been many years since she had cared what hairy things dangled between their pale, scrawny legs. She now considered the fact that she had ever cared a kind of temporary lunacy and was thankful that her madness had been short lived, not terribly virulent and ultimately cured by marriage as God intended.

The world is divided between kids who grew up wanting be their parents and those like us, who grow up wanting anything but. Neither group ever succeeds.

The world is divided between kids who grew up wanting to be their parents and those like us, who wanted anything but. Neither group ever succeeds.

It's none of your business anyhow," Wirf said. Words to live by, Sully had to admit. But he kept hearing Peter's mockery. Not really his dog. Not really his house. Not really his business. And there were other not reallys as well. There

Even to my mother, her hard-won autonomy must at times have resembled a cage. Still, it was a cage of her own design, different from and superior to the one my father and her parents, and Gloversville itself ,would have put her in, if she'd allowed them to.

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else.

the achievement of human autonomy has been paid for by the experience of human alienation.

The message is clear – those who do not feel in control of their lives are less successful, and less psychologically and physically healthy, than those who do feel in control.

The thing to do was to act just like others acted, live like they lived, and while they were not looking, do what you wanted.

In all my life— though surrounded by many people— I had not had a single satisfying, sustained relationship with another human being and, not having had any, I did not miss it. I made no demands whatever upon others.