Quotes About Autonomy

While the word proactivity is now fairly common in management literature, it is a word you won't find in most dictionaries. It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.

Independent people can get what they want through

In the last analysis, 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.

that no one can hurt me without my consent

being a puppet pulled by someone else's strings to high proactivity, the power to act according to your own values instead of being acted upon by other people and circumstances.

It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.

a fundamental principle about the nature of man: Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.

As you become truly independent, you have the foundation for effective interdependence.

Dependent people need others to get what they want. Independent people can get what they want through their own efforts.

Look at the word responsibility—"response-ability"—the ability to choose your response.

No one can hurt you without your consent." In the words of Gandhi, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them.

They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them. It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place.

It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.

self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influences that limit other people.

People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day will, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally "being lived." They are acting out the scripts written by parents, associates, and society.

True independence of character empowers us to act rather than be acted upon. It frees us from our dependence on circumstances and other people and is a worthy, liberating goal. But it is not the ultimate goal in effective living.

It is much more ennobling to the human spirit to let people judge themselves than to judge them.

Real self-respect comes from dominion over self, from true independence.

entre el estímulo y la respuesta, el ser humano tiene la libertad interior de elegir.

They want other people to be the way they want them to be. They often want to clone them, and they surround themselves with "yes" people—people who won't challenge them, people who are weaker than they.

But borrowing strength builds weakness. It builds weakness in the borrower because it reinforces dependence on external factors to get things done.

Instead of living out of the scripts given to me by my own parents or by society or by genetics or my environment, I will be living out of the script I have written from my own self-selected value system.

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

as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.