Quotes About Autonomy

It is very difficult, when there are those people who want power over other people and will stop at nothing to get it: it is very difficult for all the people who don't want power, except just power over themselves, to find a way of resisting it.

Who needed excuses? It was each man for himself. It always had been, of course, that was the philosophy the world lived by; but now more so than ever.

La liberté, pensait-elle, c'est le choix de ce qui va vous asservir.

I am good at walking away. Rejection teaches you how to reject.

It was one of the reasons she'd fallen in love with him; he didn't press her on personal matters, he was seldom jealous, and he had no interest in annexing or directing her friendships with other men.

Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself.

There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom for in that way one captures volition itself.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man.

I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.

I think more and more people want to live alone. You can be a couple without being in each other's pockets. I don't see why you have to share the same bathroom.

I could, for the first time in maybe thirty years, make my own decision, trust it, and move forward.

So maybe you should try to find an answer for yourself instead of waiting around to see what Sam's going to do. Doing something is always easier than waiting.

Exercising will builds esteem from within through action on one's own behalf; it disproves the premise that only another person can provide it. The result, long in coming and always worth the effort, is the experience of authentic agency in your own life, a sense of self that cannot be destroyed because it is not dependent on anyone else.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

I am condemned to be free.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.

He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.

It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.

There are plenty of people holding flashlights casting shadows, offering directions. Perhaps it's best if you light your own way.

Think for yourself. That's the golden rule. Think for yourself. Make it your mantra. Tattoo it on the inside of your eyelids.