Quotes About Autonomy

When you play chess alone it's always your move.

The ideally free Ego would be a lucid calculator of payoffs.

The only free man," he would say, "is one who doesn't work for anyone else.

I am not a political man and I have no political convictions. I am an individual and a believer in liberty. That is all the politics I have.

I ain't askin' nobody for nothin'....so just leave this long haired country boy alone.

I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to make them alive, but I'm just a fucked up girl who is looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.

I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to 'make them alive'…but I'm just a fucked up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.

The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master- something that at time strangely wills and works for itself.

A man's own judgement should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself. Many men do this or that because someone else thought it right.

It has always been the Rule of my Life, not to justify any Words or Actions because they are mine.

There is no education but self-education.

Let children alone... the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don't ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose.

Why not? Why not be your own man for once in your life — do what you want to — not what other people want you to?

When all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.

Management is how well it runs when you are there: Leadership is how well it runs when you are not.

I only answer to two people, myself and God.

But at some point, a full-grown woman has to be accountable for her own self, and for the choices she's made.

I never got to be in the driver's seat of my own life," she'd wept to me once, in the days after she learned she was going to die. "I always did what someone else wanted me to do. I've always been someone's daughter or mother or wife. I've never just been me." "Oh, Mom," was all I could say as I stroked her hand. I was too young to say anything else.

You get to define the terms of your life.

We do not have the right to feel helpless. We must help ourselves. After destiny has delivered what it delivers, we are responsible for our lives.

At a certain point we get to decide who it is we allow to influence us.

But I wasn't out here to keep myself from having to say I am not afraid. I'd come, I realized, to stare that fear down, to stare everything down, really—all that I'd done to myself and all that had been done to me. I couldn't do that while tagging along with someone else.

I always did what someone else wanted me to do. I've always been someone's daughter or mother or wife. I've never just been me.

You get to define the terms of your life. You get to negotiate and articulate the complexities and contradictions of your feelings...