Quotes About Autonomy

If she wanted to go,' Bonnet continued, 'there's not a thing you – or anyone else – could have done to stop her. If it's any consolation, she won't have suffered. Pills, all very peaceful. Just gone to sleep and not woken up. It's what she chose.

But things were different when she was on her own. She didn't have to put a brave face on it.

Why must the woman apologize for not having a baby just because she happened to get pregnant? It's as if we think motherhood is the default setting for a woman's life from first period to menopause, and she needs a note from God not to say yes to every zygote that knocks on her door.

But "Trust Women" doesn't mean that every woman is wise or good or has magical intuitive powers. It means that no one else can make a better decision, because no one else is living her life, and since she will have to live with that decision, not you, and not the state legislature or the Supreme Court, chances are she is doing her best in a tight spot.

We don't like the idea that a man might be severely constrained for life by a single ejaculation. He has places to go and things to do. That a woman's life may be stunted by unwanted childbearing is not so troubling. Childbearing, after all, is what women are for.

Even if we all decided to define personhood to include fertilized eggs and embryos and fetuses, they would not have the right to use a woman's body against her will and at whatever cost to herself. Persons are not entitled to use one another like that: Even if I am the only person in the world who can save my child by donating a kidney, the decision is still mine to make.

What the president never accepted, or even clearly understood – as most people don't understand – is the autonomy editors have, and must have, to produce a good newspaper. I used to describe it as liberty, not license.

When you've lived alone for a number of years I'm afraid that you begin to realize how hard it would be to accommodate to living with someone else. Adjusting to or even indulging his desires and his life. It was clear to me that I was married to my job. And that I loved it.

I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to, and I've made enough money to support myself, and ain't afraid of being alone.

If you need a helping hand, you can find one at the end of your arm.

Then the feeling passed and I felt all right. I loved them both, but neither Abe nor my mother had any purchase on me. They could say what they liked, and I would love them still, but I would not change my behavior, would not change my mind.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be. — James Baldwin

They had engaged in what could not be called treatment or even discussion, but open combat, the two of them a microcosm of the great war raging in the far distance: one side that desired autonomy, and the other that took independence as a sign of madness.

Be self-confident. Don't let others take the bread

I was also working on the question: Why hadn't I extricated myself sooner? Why had I not reacted for so long? Why couldn't I give up the idea sooner of marriage and at least entertained the possibility of being on my own sooner? The version of myself who was worrying about the correct way to press the elevator button was not actually me, so why had I allowed her to exist and walk around and go to playgrounds and sit in libraries and shop for dinner for so long?

In the light of day, it's hard to understand why I am derailed by a tiny thing like getting out of a taxi on a Sunday night. Of course, right behind the fear that I can't manage on my own is another more terrifying fear: that I can.

If he pushed too often or too hard, she was very capable of, at the very least, calling her boss or her invisible partner and having Max put on ice somewhere while she went on working. The girl twelve years ago couldn't have done that, but this woman certainly could. And would.

After all, if a community could reach some sort of an equilibrium without having to be guided by an outsider, then so much the better.

With a strength I can be proud of, I live only for myself, and only die for myself. I'll never die for someone, cause I know the pain of who remains alive, this is my pride.

Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime."? It's the same for mathematics education for twenty-first century life.

What am I? Let's just say I won't fetch a stick for you. I won't beg for treats. And, no matter how nicely you ask, I will not roll over and play dead.

I had to take responsibility, even if it meant saying no to an authority figure, because I was the authority on me.

In the meantime, I'll get a job. I'll pay my own way." "A job?" "Mmm, yeah. It's that thing people do to make money.

I needed to make choices for me, whoever I was. I'd say I needed to find myself, if that didn't sound like I was heading into the Himalayas, taking only a backpack stuffed with angst and clean underwear