Quotes About Autonomy

America and fame: they are equally useful if you want freedom from your mother.

They can create their own expressions, and they can seek out the information they need, with substantially less dependence on the commercial mass media of the twentieth century.

If people don't want to come out to the ball park, nobody's going to stop them.

Self-reliance conquers any difficulty

My religion is to trust myself.

It is precisely the lack of explicit objectives determined by external parties that fascinates children.

The nationalism I grew up with is a principled standpoint that regards the world as governed best when nations are able to chart their own independent course, cultivating their own traditions and pursuing their own interests without interference. This is opposed to imperialism, which seeks to bring peace and prosperity to the world by uniting mankind, as much as possible, under a single political regime.

Freedom is taking control of the rudder of your life.

Technology isn't bad. If you know what you want in life, technology can help you get it. But if you don't know what you want in life, it will be all too easy for technology to shape your aims for you and take control of your life. Especially as technology gets better at understanding humans, you might increasingly find yourself serving it, instead of it serving you.

The average person might well be no happier today than in 1800. Even the freedom we value so highly may be working against us. We can choose our spouses, friends and neighbors, but they can choose to leave us.

For centuries humanism has been convincing us that we are the ultimate source of meaning, and that our free will is therefore the highest authority of all.

I teach the kids history, or quantum physics, or art – but above all I try to teach them to think for themselves.

Humans will no longer be autonomous entities directed by the stories their narrating self invents. Instead, they will be integral parts of a huge global network.

But if both liberalism and communism are now discredited, maybe humans should abandon the very idea of a single global story? Why should Vietnamese villagers put their faith in the brainchild of a German from Trier and a Manchester industrialist? Maybe each country should adopt a different idiosyncratic path, defined by its own ancient traditions? Perhaps even Westerners should take a break from trying to run the world, and focus on their own affairs for a change?

the mind is never free of manipulation.

Liberalism has a particularly confused notion of 'free will'. Humans obviously have a will, they have desires, and they are sometimes free to fulfil their desires. If by 'free will' you mean the freedom to do what you desire - then yes, humans have free will. But if by 'free will' you mean the freedom to choose what to desire - then no, humans have no free will.

Most Westerners today believe in individualism. They believe that every human is an individual, whose worth does not depend on what other people think of him or her.

But the liberation of the individual comes at a cost.

With the individual wielding unprecedented power to decide her own path in life, we find it ever harder to make commitments.

In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.

The sole means of ridding man of crime is to rid him of freedom.

I prefer being wrong in my own way to being right in someone else's.

We are our own gods.

Give a man a fish and he has food for a day; teach him how to fish and you can get rid of him for the entire weekend.