Quotes About Independence

Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual you have an obligation to be one.

I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on.

I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don't make up their minds, someone will do it for them.

It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all.

When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else … you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived.

I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." ? Eleanor Roosevelt, This is My Story

our children must learn...to face full responsibility for their actions, to make their own choices and cope with the results...the whole democratic system...depends upon it. For our system is founded on self-government, which is untenable if the individuals who make up the system are unable to govern themselves.

Only I can let you disrepect me! Eleanore Roosevelt

no one can afford not to be a man. No position can compensate for coming face to face with a robot when you are alone.

She never told me anything, but she allowed me to read anything I wanted in the library, which held a great many books.

Nadie puede hacer que te sientas inferior sin tu consentimiento

In the very desire for help one is apt to forget that the objective should be to enable the individual to stand on his own feet.

Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don't be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren't paying any attention to you.

It was the flexibility, the originality, and the independence of thought—combined, of course, with our vast resources—that made American business grow so rapidly. If the seeds of growth are made sterile, if men become passive followers instead of developing qualities of leadership—and courage—we may find someday that our way of life has been superseded.

What other people think of me is none of my business.

We must all face an unpalatable fact that we have, too often, a tendency to skim over; we proceed on the assumption that all men want freedom. This is not as true as we would like it to be. There are many men and women who are far happier when they have relinquished their freedom, when someone else guides them, makes their decisions for them, takes the responsibility for them and for their actions. They don't want to make up their minds. They don't want to stand on their own feet.

o one can make you feel inferior without your consent

Let us spare nothing but our provisions. For they will be a testimonial when we are dead, that we were not subdued for want of necessaries; but that, according to our original resolution, we have preferred death before slavery.

I was not the woman who breaks into pieces under the blows of abandonment and absence, who goes mad, who dies. Only a few fragments had splintered off, for the rest I was well. I was whole, whole I would remain. To those who hurt me, I react giving back in kind. I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

What a mistake, above all, it had been to believe that I couldn't live without him, when for a long time I had not been at all certain that I was alive with him.

I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.