Quotes About Autonomy

If you have property, you can't be property.

Families with nothing would sometimes sell their toddlers to indenture schools, where managers trained them to be submissive just like they were programming a bot. At least bots could earn their way out of ownership after a while, be upgraded, and go fully autonomous. Humans might earn their way out, but there was no autonomy key that could undo a childhood like that.

More likely, he would die before ever getting it. But he wanted to survive—that urge was part of his programming. It was what defined him as human-equivalent and therefore deserving autonomy. The bot had no choice but to fight for his life. Still, to Paladin, it didn't feel like a lack of choice. It felt like hope.

Paladin was sure that wasn't just some indenture algorithm weighting his decision matrix; it was his true desire.

Is that really what you want, or is that your programming?" Bug challenged. Actin sent a series of rude emojis. "It's what I want. It's my programming. I can't possibly know, and it's a completely uninteresting question to me. I don't even believe in consciousness. When I've got my autonomy, I'll still be programmed, and I'll still need a job researching brain interfaces.

Sequence wants to be free.

Is that how humans are raised? Autonomous?

The making of personhood through synthetic assemblage or accretion can be impoverishing and additive. It can produce a person-assemblage that destroys autonomy but one that disrupts the privileged notion of natural bodies as well.

I refused to be less than what I am, and I made them deal with me on my own terms.

No one else has the right to decide if or when we cut our skin, but if we don't learn to interpret the warning signs that tell us if we really need to cut, we can become the enslavers as well as the enslaved. We can become our own enemy.

A woman with an education may be able to spend more time sitting in a chair instead of lying on her back. A sound advantage, I should think.

Elektra: I ask this one thing: let me go mad in my own way.

Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

Parents can only give good advice or put them [children] on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

You got nobody in this life to look out for you except yourself.

The idea that you could think and choose how to be, instead of simply reacting

Angelo was a grown man, and here was one thing he was quite free to decide for himself, and yet he was ready to let others make up his mind for him...that could only be stupidity.

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.

Books allow readers to determine what they wish. People often aren't quite as forgiving if you don't read or see exactly what they wish you to.

I had to live my life as I saw it.

Be aware that you can truly help people only by aiding them to become what they are, not what you are. I have heard you say 'If I were you, I would do this, or that.' 'I' am never 'you'--and my solutions may not be yours.

Oh, all right, I say, I'll save myself.

The great theme we all share is that of becoming ourselves, of overcoming our father and mother, of assuming our identities somehow.