Quotes About Autonomy

La única interpretación es que el hombre puede ser infinitamente cruel con su semejante. Puede ser cruel sin conocer al prójimo, sin haberle visto el rostro ni haber sostenido su mirada. Puede ser cruel por decisión soberana y autónoma. Como si ese prójimo no fuera un espejo. Cuando destruye el espejo, se destruye a sí mismo.

Jugar solo tiene gracia cuando es el resultado de una libre elección, y no cuando es la opción única, casi obligatoria.

If governments let themselves be fully bound by the decisions of their parliaments without protecting their own freedom to act, a breakup of Europe would be a more probable outcome than deeper integration.

Women are, by nature, disposed to relationship and connectedness; yet true relationship cannot be embraced until a woman as a deep sense of her at-one-ment. Without this essential independence from all roles and bonds, she is a potential victim for servitude.

Since she has not been present in the culture, she has not been readily accessible to the conscious awareness of modern women. Without her, even the dynamic symbols of Virgin and Mother are distorted. The Crone is a woman is that part of her psyche that is not identified with any relationship nor confined by any bond. She infuses an intrinsic sense of self-worth, of autonomy, into the role of virgin and mother, and gives the woman strength to stand to her own creative experience.

She's the main character in her story, just like I'm the main character in mine.

The Berkeley psychologist had called Dev "self-possessed" and at the time, he hadn't been exactly sure what that meant, but as he played chess with Clare, the word suddenly made perfect sense. The same way Teo and Cornelia belonged to Clare, Clare belonged to herself. Clare liked being Clare, the same way that Dev had always (even when he was friendless and invisible) liked being Dev.

Americans claimed to be following a higher law, even when this higher law only turned out to be a personal preference.

If we don't control our calendar, our calendar will end up controlling us.

was the sum of my experiences. I was my own person. I was who I needed to be, not what someone else wanted me to be.

self-identity ("This is who I am and the only way I feel confident, competent, and in control").

If you don't learn to feed yourself, you wind up dumpster diving for someone else's leftovers.

I don't like definitions, but if there is a definition of freedom, it would be when you have control over your reality to transform it, to change it, rather than having it imposed upon you. You can't really ask for more than.

Anything or anyone that asks you to be other than yourself is not holy, but is trying only to fill its own need.

To make a real independent film where the filmmaker is in charge creatively, one must sacrifice personal, financial, and physical well-being.

However, the erosion of individual sovereignty, free will, and self-sufficiency necessarily give way to dependence, conformity, and finally tyranny.

Statist, liberty is not a blessing but the enemy. It is not possible to achieve Utopia if individuals are free to go their own way.

As a writer you have as many bosses as you have readers...though in the end, you must answer to yourself.

If I needed your condescension, I'd ask for it.

Yes, we are all alone in this world. At least, when it comes right down to it. We are by ourselves, even when we're with others. All our thoughts are ours, alone.

Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks--drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care, and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high. Big Government is the small option: it's the guarantee of smaller freedom, smaller homes, smaller cars, smaller opportunities, smaller lives.

Trust in no power but your own, Emil. If you want to be saved, save yourself.

Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

Life is so beautiful. Nobody can control your life