Quotes About Autonomy

I'm tired of everyone deciding what's for my own good!

That was the trouble with wanting somebody else to take on making decisions—sometimes they did, and you ended up going to Nebraska.

Without thinking about what she was doing, she pulled blueberries from the icebox and peaches from the fruit bin. She might have only been seven years old, but she was smart enough to know that her mother would have a fit if she pulled out knives, or did anything near the two-burner hot plate. Instead, Portia, pulled the peaches apart, catching the sticky-sweet juice on her tongue as it ran down her fingers. She found a slice of angel food cake wrapped in plastic and plopped the fruit on top.

At three I had learned the litany of despair and knew its truth with all my being: depend on no one.

No one will rescue you.

She had always enjoyed her sense of being alone, envisioning herself as a ball that rolled through life, bumping into other lives but not stopping.

I have brain damage, remember? I'm not responsible for my actions--or for the actions of my hand, which acted of its own volition and without my knowledge.' Cam to Bailey

I won't be talked around as if I'm invisible. This is my house, and let me remind all of you that I'm well over twenty-one. I'll go where I want, when I want. Let them make of that what they would! She hadn't lived with Aunt Ardith for nothing; Aunt Ardith would have died, just on principle, before she would have let a man tell her what to do.

Life would be only what they chose to make it, grappling within the straitjacket of society

Benevolent dictator? No, I'm just lazy. I try to manage by not making decisions and letting things occur naturally. That's when you get the best results.

Later came the hard knowledge that no one can save you from yourself.

No pimp wants the hired help to achieve financial independence.

In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.

No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.

After we graduate tonight, we no longer have to let society happen to us. We get to create our own.

Civilization, or "the system" or "society" or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men.

You really don't create an authoritarian society unless you control the personal choices including the sexual choices of the people.

The right to religious freedom has its foundation, not in the church or society or the state, but in the very dignity of the human person.

He is free who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide at each step, the course of his life, and who lives in a society which does not block the exercise of that power.

I don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.

Living in a society, instead of on a desert island, does not relieve a man of the responsibility of supporting his own life.

There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself.

Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like.

I try to define myself through my own choices rather than just accepting society's kind of you're that, you're that, let me put you in a box kind of thing.