Quotes About Autonomy

There is more than one kind of freedom," said Aunt Lydia. "Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.

I've got selfish in my old age. I live as I like.

She finally said: 'I want to provide you with the opportunity to be free to make a choice of belonging with someone, but never to someone else'.

Too bad to deprive them, but if a person doesn't look after herself in this world, no one else is likely to.

Our treatment of both older people and children reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, Go to sleep by yourselves. And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.

The notion that we are products of our environment is our greatest sin; we are products of our choices." Margaret Mead (this may not be her exact wording, but it's close enough).

Margaret Peterson Haddix

Separation and individuation are conceived of as two complementary developments: separation consists of the child's emergence from a symbiotic fusion with the mother (Mahler, 1952), and individuation consists of those achievements marking the child's assumption of his own individual characteristics.

Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers - and before it can be his, it is hers alone.

She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.

No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body.

No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers — and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.

No gods, no masters.

Every woman should be "absolute mistress of her own body.

The best contraceptive is the word no — repeated frequently.

I owe nothing to Women's Lib.

When people are free to choose, they choose freedom

When the state does everything for you, it will soon take everything from you.

I can't be a rose in any man's lapel.

I have a natural tendency to go away when told to do so. Do you really want me to?

I will choose what enters me, what becomes of my flesh. Without choice, no politics, no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield, not your uranium mine, not your calf for fattening, not your cow for milking. You may not use me as your factory. Priests and legislators do not hold shares in my womb or my mind. This is my body. If I give it to you I want it back. My life is a non-negotiable demand.

The only thing worse than a man you can't control is a man you can.