Quotes About Autonomy

It is surprising to notice that even from the earliest age, man finds the greatest satisfaction in feeling independent. The exalting feeling of being sufficient to oneself comes as a revelation.

I don't have a battery of agents to surround me in a cocoon.

Here's a simple truth: When you surround a good idea with brilliant people, it changes. No matter how much you plan, great ideas have a mind of their own.

The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants.

You must define yourself, for no one else has the wisdom to do it for you.

At the most general level, the idea of privacy embraces the desire to be left alone, free to be ourselves – uninhibited and unconstrained by the prying of others. This extends beyond snooping and unsolicited publicity to intrusions upon the 'space' we need to make intimate, personal decisions without the intrusion of the state.

There is no good answer to how to be a woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question.

We need to stop telling the story about the woman who stayed home, passive and dependent, waiting for her man. She wasn't sitting around waiting. She was busy. She still is.

Smile, a man orders you, and that's a concise way to say that he owns you; he's the boss; you do as you're told; your face is there to serve his life, not express your own. He's someone; you're no one.

You can whittle away at reproductive rights, as conservatives have in most states of the union, but you can't convince the majority of women that they should have no right to control their own bodies.

nobody is good or valuable because of who their parents are, or bad because their parents are bad. They are as good and valuable as they are in their own words and deeds...

I believe the hatred of abortion is often because it gives women an autonomy and freedom equivalent to that of men, and that hatred is often expressed by people who show no interest in the health of infants or the wellbeing of children. Or women. And at this point, in science, facts, and truth. Their lies pave the way for their laws.

My mother had always wanted me to take care of her, but she pictured this as a manifestation of her ascendancy, not her decline.

Her name was Her, but what was hers? His name was His, and he presumed everything was his, including her, and he thought he could take her without asking and without consequences

Just because the question can be answered doesn't mean that anyone is obliged to answer it, or that it ought to be asked.

Sometimes birds return to their cages when the door is open, sometimes people free to make their own choices choose to abandon that power.

Would you ask a man that?") Such questions seem to come out of the sense that there are not women, the 51 percent of the human species who are as diverse in their wants and as mysterious in their desires as the other 49 percent, only Woman, who must marry, must breed, must let men in and babies out, like some elevator for the species.

Your feelings are the utmost priority, your desires are more important than anyone else's deadline or mandate.

Wir sind anderen ja auch nur zumutbar, wenn wir auch allein mit uns selbst zurechtkommen.

My feeling of satisfaction, my happiness if you like, is not dependent on applause or accolades of any kind but on the fact that I was able to do what I wanted to do - and to see it through.

Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.

To be a member of such a crowd ... is not much to be far removed from solitude; the freedom of everyone is assured by the freedom to which everyone else lays claim.

The idea of choice has deeply penetrated our perception of feelings, as though we can 'choose' whether or not to have them.

Whatever sartorial choices a woman makes are hers and hers alone. It is neither a man's nor the state's place to define proper "womanhood" in Islam. Those who treat the Muslim woman not as an individual but as a symbol either of Islamic chastity or secular liberalism are guilty of the same sin: the objectification of women.