Quotes About Autonomy

The characteristic signature of poverty is a return to self-sufficiency.

Imagine if you had to be completely self-sufficient (not just pretending, like Thoreau).

Again and again, we have told ourselves that there is a top–down description of the world, and a top–down prescription by which we should live.

In most companies, no one really notices you until they need you. And even then, when someone wanders into your office or IMs you and finds that you're gone, they just assume you're doing something constructive. Sitting in some horrible, pointless meeting. Stealing office supplies. Weeping gently in a bathroom stall on the fourth floor. Once you've established yourself as reasonably competent, you can pretty much come and go as you please. And

It is my conviction that we make ourselves who we want to be and not chain ourselves to the notions of busybodies who wish to judge us.

In many organizations, poorly defined team interactions and responsibilities are a source of friction and ineffectiveness. A team may have been told it is autonomous and self-organizing, but team members find they have to interact with many other teams in order to complete their work; and this feels frustrating. Another team may have responsibility for providing an API or service, but they don't really have the experience to do this effectively.

Which was precisely what I had to do. Go away. Get out of this house and his life while I still had a shred of dignity left.

She was exactly who she wanted to be.

I don't think a man can hurt another, not in any important way. Neither hurt him nor help him. I have really nothing to forgive you.

Don't you know that most people take most things because that's what's given them, and they have no opinion whatever? Do you wish to be guided by what they expect you to think they think or by your own judgment?

The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men.

he does not achieve through other men nor for other men, he achieves through and for himself alone, then offers it to others.

What I've got to offer you is your life.' 'It's not yours to offer...

My real soul...? It's real only when it's independent...

What I mean is, what makes people unhappy is not too little choice, but too much, said Mitchell Layton. having to decide, always to decide, torn every which way all of the time. Now in a society of pattern, a man could feel safe. Nobody would come to him all the time pestering him to do something. Nobody would have to do anything. What I mean is, of course, except working for the common good.

I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. I've always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I've always recognized it at once—and it's the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters.

I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your primer concern within other men

No hay nada que pueda arrebatar a un hombre su libertad, salvo otros hombres.

the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.

We will not deal with men on any terms but ours—and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an end in himself and not the means to any end of others. We do not seek to force our code upon them. They are free to believe what they please.

The men I was fighting were impotent. The shiftless, the purposeless, the irresponsible, the irrational—it was not I who needed them, it was not theirs to dictate terms to me, it was not mine to obey demands.

My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose. Neither am I the means to any ends others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice of their altars.

I would die for you, but i wouldn't live for you.

All that which proceeds from man's independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man's dependence upon men is evil.