Quotes About Autonomy

You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence

Never do anything for anyone who can just as well do it themself

The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do themselves.

You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty... We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. --April 18, 1864 Address at Baltimore

Anarchists were opposed to bureaucracy of any kind, and their rallying cry was "Too many committees!

Are we slaves or masters of our genes? We are neither, and it's a dumb, simplistic question.

Can I give her a choice about when to do something, rather than insisting upon "right now." ("Do you want to take your bath before your TV show or right after?")

Or maybe when she realized that he was never going to come and rescue her, she did what all strong women do. She found a way to save herself.

The girl who built her life so carefully so she'd never have to ask anybody for anything. I have had it with me. Whoever I was!

There really is no correct way to hike the trail, and anyone who insists that there is ought not to worry so much about other people's experiences. Hikers need to hike the trail that's right for them...

Self-help is the best help.

It is no use being your own master unless you can stand up for yourself.

intellectuals became preoccupied with an aspiration as fundamental in humans as the urge for individual autonomy: the need to belong.

You can't predict the outcome. You can't raise a child and then tell them what to think.

When I crossed the street, according to my mother, I still had to hold someone's hand. At ten, I would be able to cross streets unhanded. I'd held on to Joseph's many times before, for many years, but holding his was like holding a plant, and the disappointment of fingers that didn't grasp back was so acute that at some point I'd opted to take his forearm instead.

The impulse to escape notice is not about complacent isolation or senseless conformity, but about maintaining identity, propriety, autonomy, and voice. It is not about retreating from the digital world but about finding some genuine alternative to a life of perpetual display.

freedom. But the two strands, though intertwined, must remain separate in order for the structure of freedom to

The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only need to achieve autonomy from your parents, find a moderately satisfying job, form a relationship, perhaps raise some children, watch the onset of mortality in your parents' generation and eventually in your own, until one day a fatal illness starts gnawing at your innards and you calmly go to the grave, shut the coffin and are done with the self-evident business of life.

We should forever forswear the masochistic process wherein we seek another's approval before we have even asked ourselves whether that person's views deserve to be listened to.

There would come a moment with every book when we would feel that something was incongruous, misunderstood, or constraining, and it would give us a responsibility to leave our guide behind and continue our thoughts alone.

Let's make sure our ideas of success are our own, that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions.

His impression of her freedom and autonomy scares as much as it excites him.