Quotes About Autonomy

Everything that loomed so large close up—school, their parents, their lives—all you had to do was step away, and they shrank to nothing. You could stop taking their phone calls, tear up their letters, pretend they'd never existed. Start over as a new person with a new life. Just a problem of geography, he thought, with the confidence of someone who had never yet tried to free himself of family.

The first time she'd gotten a short haircut-- paid for with her own money, thank you very much-- her mother had demanded to know if she was a lesbian.

Even something harsh and difficult is a comfort if we choose it ourselves. If it is imposed on us by others, it is agony.

but I am the sort of person who does not seem to need the day-to-day emotional support provided by normal civilized social contact.

A satisfactory answer clearly cannot be found in the assumption that each person's actions proceed from an unfettered, autonomous will. The reason for the choice would still have to be discovered. Nor will it do to attribute the difference of choice to different environmental influences in which the "self" is placed. This would indeed be reducing the man to the level of a machine, or to a lower level still. And the same environmental influences do not produce identical results.

Democracy assumes that individuals must be allowed to be the best judge of their own interests, even if they often seem to be misguided. Governments are not there to tell us what to believe or think, they are there to represent our beliefs, and to translate them into laws or regulations.

Those men get along best with women who can get along best without them.

I wasn't a misanthrope and I wasn't a misogynist but I liked being alone. It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.

Each man must have his I; it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble.

I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men

A great country worthy of the name does not have any friends.

The mark in the snow shows a weight. Who refuses his choices refuses oneself. (La marque dans la neige vit un poids. Se refuse qui refuse ses choix)

I took a good deal o' pains with his eddication, sir; let him run in the streets when he was very young, and shift for hisself. It's the only way to make a boy sharp, sir.

We went our several ways," said Lady Dedlock, "and had little in common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I suppose, but it could not be helped.

He didn't at all see why the busy bee should be proposed as a model to him; he supposed the Bee liked to make honey, or he wouldn't do it — nobody asked him. It was not necessary for the bee to make such a merit of his tastes.

I am self-contained and self-reliant; your opinion is nothing to me; I have no interest in you, care nothing for you, and see and hear you with indifference.

It's the whole point of the thing, you know—that, and leaving the business to take care of itself, as it seems to have made up its mind not to take care of me.

I think I know the delights of freedom

I will not allow anybody to interfere," said Mrs. Pocket. "I am surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the affront of interference.

There was never a nation that became great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help.

Everyone is a puppet, but there are no puppet-masters.

To be truly rich is to have sovereignty over our own time.

The main thing I believe in is freedom.

Our future is entirely within our own control. It is not at the mercy of any capricious or uncertain external power.