Quotes About Autonomy

Decentralization, dear

The ultimate weapon isn't this plague out in Vegas, or any new super H-bomb. The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It's the ability to say No and take the consequences.

Groups are grammatical fictions; only individuals exist, and each individual is different.

I can summarize my thoughts now by simply saying each must find his or her own Way because the way does not exist.

I am not a donkey to be led by the carrot of salvation and the stick of damnation without thinking of where they are driving me and what they are making me do.

1. Thou shalt not force thy neighbor to alter his consciousness. 2. Thou shalt not prevent thy neighbor from altering his consciousness.

NO "EXTERNAL" SITUATION MAKES A MENTAL STATE "INEVITABLE

fear that if I'm dependent on anything or anyone I can't control my life.

I could speak to her, but she'd continue to do what she wants, and I'd look ineffectual. My approach is to endorse everything she does.

What I must do concerns me, not what people think.' 

Conversation between Susan's therapist and Spenser - And when you find her? Then what? Then she will be free again to come here and work with you until she can make the choices she wishes to make. And what if you are not that choice? I think I will be. But I can't control that. What I can do is see that she's free to choose.

Ollie do any of his own work?" "Mostly he runs things.

Words can," Susan said. "And tone of voice. You're just so goddamned autonomous that you won't explain yourself to anybody.

You wanted me to insist. You wanted me to win the argument." "Wanted is too simple," Susan said. She had shifted her gaze from her martini to the ongoing afternoon outside her kitchen window. "I wanted and didn't want. I needed both my autonomy and your protection. By acting the way I did, I managed to have both.

One thing was certain, she was through depending on others--others who didn't care, who just wanted to keep out of trouble.

Leave us alone and we'll leave you alone, or else we will hunt you down wherever you are.

One broad class difference in parenting norms turns up in virtually all studies: well-educated parents aim to raise autonomous, independent, self-directed children with high self-esteem and the ability to make good choices, whereas less educated parents focus on discipline and obedience and conformity to pre-established rules.

I'm glad of any political freedom they give me, but what I'm interested in is not political freedom. I'm interested in the liberties I take.

Do not commit yourself to anybody or anything, for that is to be a slave, a slave to every man.... Above all, keep yourself free of commitments and obligations—they are the device of another to get you into his power.... (Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658) PART

Understand this: The world wants to assign you a role in life. And once you accept that role you are doomed. Your

we tend to think of our behavior as largely conscious and willed. To imagine that we are not always in control of what we do is a frightening thought, but in fact it is the reality.

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself. —LEONARDO DA VINCI In

To follow precisely the lead of others or advice from a book is self-defeating

It's my world, and I don't want any other. What it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing.