Quotes About Autonomy

Children do not constitute anyone's property: they are neither the property of their parents nor even of society. They belong only to their own future freedom.

In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.

We indeed did and do own our own minds and bodies, and anything from church or state that limits that is inappropriate and inconsistent with the ... society that America is supposed to be.

A truly free society is based on a vision of respect for people and what they value.

My experience in childhood and adolescence of the subordinate role played by the female in a society run entirely by men had convinced me that I was not cut out to be a wife.

Democracy cannot be exported to some other place. This must be a product of internal domestic development in a society.

I think the real free person in society is one that's disciplined. It's the one that can choose; that is the free one.

The discipline in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority.

Black people cannot and will not become integrated into American society on any terms but those of self-determination and autonomy.

If a society is to be free, its government has to be controlled.

There can be no autonomous agent with unitary interests called 'society' that exerts causal influence. This is a logical impossibility

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves.

He taught me housekeeping when I divorce I keep the house.

I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.

Debate is never finished; it can't be, lest democracy be no longer democratic and society be stripped of or forfeit its autonomy. Democracy means that the citizen's task is never complete. Democracy exists through persevering and unyielding citizens' concern. Once that concern is put to sleep, democracy expires.

Avoid the crowd, avoid mass audiences, keep your own counsel, which is the counsel of philosophy--of wisdom you can acquire and make your own.

The relations individuals enter into with other individuals nowadays have been described as 'pure' – meaning 'no strings attached', no unconditional obligations assumed and so no predetermination, and therefore no mortgaging, of the future. The sole foundation and only reason for the relationship to continue is, it has been said, the amount of mutual satisfaction drawn from it.

To quote from Le Délabrement de l'Occident of Cornelius Castoriadis, An autonomous society, a truly democratic society, is a society which questions everything that is pre-given and by the same token liberates the creation of new meanings.

I]n consumer culture choosing and freedom are two names of the same condition; and treating them as synonymous is correct at least in the sense that you can abstain from choosing only by at the same time surrendering your freedom.

Lots of people in my somewhat leaky boat are on the lookout for a human companion. Not me. I have learned to love the inside of my own head. There isn't much I'd rather say than think.

Inner liberty depends upon being exempt from domination of things as well as from domination of people. There are many who have acquired a high degree of political and social liberty, but only very few are not enslaved to things.

no man is free who is not a master of himself, that the more liberties we enjoy, the more discipline we need.46 Laissez-faire

Every man's happiness is his own responsibility.