Quotes About Autonomy

I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

Your job is to preserve yourself, not to descend into their hole. It's a relief when you arrive at this place, the point of absurdity, because then you are free, you owe them nothing.

I have no choice, which is the best kind of choice.

Reinforce freedom of choice: sometimes people resist, not because they are dismissing the argument, but because they are rejecting the feeling of their behavior being controlled. It helps to respect their autonomy by reminding them that it's up to them to choose what they believe.

The real struggle for us is for the citizen to cease to be the property of the state.

We make ourselves out of the demands others make of us, and out of whatever else we can use.

10. You have to deal with stuff on your own and that's all there is to it.

I think church and state should remain entirely separate at all costs, and that the decision of religious marriage should be of each faith to debate and decide free of political influence.

Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.

Ése es el gran desafío," dije, "cambiar nuestro pensamiento de 'cómo arreglo las cosas yo' a 'cómo capacito a mis hijos para arreglar las cosas por sí mismos.

And I didn't mean to shut her out, but sometimes I did it anyway. I liked having power. Power is its own kind of magic.

shrug. I don't feel that. I'd settle for being ignored, left alone, unjudged. Unharried. I just want to live my life. I don't need anyone to understand it. 'Do you think? It strikes me as the ultimate in self-absorption, hoping for understanding from others to give meaning to your life. Get over yourself, I say.

That's exactly what I'll do, I thought to myself. After dinner, I'm going to ask Big Brother to teach me how to read this map. With Aunt Baba still in Tianjin, there's obviously nobody looking out for me. I'll just have to find my own way.

Responsiblity is a unique concept. It can only reside and inhere in a single individual. You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you. You may disclaim it, but you cannot divest yourself of it.

It is ridiculous to lay down to people where a thing should stand, design everything for them from the lavatory pan to the ashtray. On the contrary, I like people to move their furniture so that it suits them (not me!), and it's quite natural (and I approve) when they bring the old pictures and mementos they have come to love into a new interior, irrespective of whether they are good taste or bad.

A kdo si zakládá domov, a? si za?izuje vše sám.

If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.

In meritocratic society, people are individuals before they are anything else: masters of their fates and captains of their souls.32

When a girl is beautiful, she gets to pick - she never has to wait for someone to choose her.

The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers.

But can you imagine how some of them were envying you your freedom to work, to think, to travel, to enter a room as yourself, not as some child's mother or some man's wife?…we have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.

Any woman who has moved from the playing fields of male discourse into the realm where women are developing our own descriptions of the world knows the extraordinary sense of shedding, as it were, the encumbrance of someone else's baggage, of ceasing to translate.

I would feel [my son's] wants at such a moment fraudulent, as an attempt moreover to defraud me of living even for fifteen minutes as myself. My anger would rise

To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.