Quotes About Autonomy

philosopher Isaiah Berlin made an important distinction between "negative liberty" and "positive liberty." Negative liberty is "freedom from"—freedom from constraint, freedom from being told what to do by others. Positive liberty is "freedom to"—the availability of opportunities to be the author of your life and to make it meaningful and significant.

Those who value freedom of choice and movement will tend to stay away from entangling relationships;

Every choice we make is a testament to our autonomy, to our sense of self-determination. Almost every social, moral, or political philosopher in the Western tradition since Plato has placed a premium on such autonomy. And each new expansion of choice gives us another opportunity to assert our autonomy, and this display our character.

Having the opportunity to choose is no blessing if we feel we do not have the wherewithal to choose wisely.

CHOICE HAS A CLEAR AND POWERFUL INSTRUMENTAL VALUE; IT enables people to get what they need and want in life.

when faced with overwhelming choice, we are forced to become "pickers," which is to say, relatively passive selectors from whatever is available. Being a chooser is better, but to have the time to choose more and pick less, we must be willing to rely on habits, customs, norms, and rules to make some decisions automatic.

Quite apart from the instrumental benefits of choice—that it enables people to get what they want—and the expressive benefits of choice—that it enables people to say who they are—choice enables people to be actively and effectively engaged in the world, with profound psychological benefits.

Taking care of our own "wants" and focusing on what we "want" to do does not strike me as a solution to the problem of too much choice. It is precisely so that we can, each of us, focus on our own wants that all of these choices emerged in the first place.

AWAY OF EASING THE BURDEN THAT FREEDOM OF CHOICE IMPOSES IS to make decisions about when to make decisions. These are what Cass Sunstein and Edna Ullmann-Margalit call second-order decisions. One kind of second-order decision is the decision to follow a rule.

So, once again, satisficing appears the better way to maintain one's autonomy in the face of an overwhelming array of choices.

original art is self-regulated; and no original art can be regulated from without. It carries its own counterpoise and does not receive it from elsewhere—lives on its own blood.

Eindelijk! De tirannie van het menselijk gelaat is verdwenen en ik zal alleen nog maar door mijzelf lijden.

Their rule is 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

we're responsible for our own lives.

We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people's definition of you.

Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

responsibility—"response-ability"—the ability to choose your response.

as Marilyn Ferguson observed, "No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal.

If you don't make a conscious effort to visualize who you are and what you want in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape you and your life by default.

We are product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger. (p. 62)

Your planning tool should be your servant, never your master.

They had more liberty, more options to choose from in their environment; but he had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options.

Between stimulus and response is our greatest power—the freedom to choose.