Quotes About Autonomy

If you want to live life exactly the way you want to, rather than following convention, then you've got to defy convention to finance that lifestyle.

My private affairs are no concern of society's. Conventions are only made to be broken. Why shouldn't I have my own way of breaking them?

I never consented to this body I've been charged with dragging until my death—

Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.

I am the captain of my soul.

God was God all by Himself

Now, finally, the earth was hers with no taint of Heaven.

Why should you ask man for permission to express when you realise that your world, in its every detail, originated within you and is sustained by you as the only conceptional center?

Man, not knowing that his world is his individual consciousness outpictured, vainly strives to conform to the opinion of others rather than to conform to the one and only opinion existent, namely, his own judgement of himself.

It is completely up to you.

The fact is, I did not appreciate until much later in my own life what subterfuge and sacrifice it took to be independent and undefeated by the pressures of reality.

I'm not some total invalid

We're always freer than we know.

You've got to let them make their own mistakes. All you can do is to follow and make sure they don't scare the horses or get arrested or damage anyone apart from themselves.

The adult children who often choose the homes prioritise safety. For the people who have to live there, other things might be more important: autonomy, for instance, or sociability, or fun.

Rather than allowing technology to control us, Mumford implied, we can control technology—if only we can muster the courage to exert the full power of our free will over the machines we make.

How do you measure the expense of an erosion of effort and engagement, or a waning of agency and autonomy, or a subtle deterioration of skill?

True independence means being free from the domination of your own internal automatic behaviors, not doing what you feel like when the urge strikes.

The secret of good government is to let men alone.

You can't live your life for other people. You've got to do what's right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.

The essence of independence has been to think and act according to standards from within, not without: to follow one's own path, not that of the crowd.

Every time you go into your workplace, you leave a democracy and enter a dictatorship.

When you're in the car, how well you do is down to you and you alone-no band, no management, no marketing.

My advice to women in general: Even if you're doing a nine-to-five job, treat yourself like a boss. Not arrogant, but be sure of what you want - and don't allow people to run anything for you without your knowledge.