Autonomy Quotes

If you do a job another's way, he or she must take the responsibility. If you do it your way, you must take the responsibility.

Do people conform to the instructions of us old ones? Each thinks he must know best about himself, and thus many are lost entirely.

All I have to do is think and not be influenced by others.

I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.

The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.

Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.

I wanted to retain my individuality. I was afraid of being hampered by studio policies. I knew if someone else got control, I would be restrained.

You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.

I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matterfor that I have determined for myself.

When I go into the garden with a spade and dig a bed I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.

If I had a humble spirit in my service who, when I asked for a glass of water, brought me the world's costliest wines blended in a chalice, I should dismiss him, in order to teach him that my pleasure consists, not in what I enjoy, but in having my own way.

I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

I really like my life. I've arranged my life so that I can do what I want.

Since I wasn't consulted at the time of the creation of the world, I reserve for myself the right to have my own opinion about it.

Nobody can tell me where I can and can't go.

Everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like a sort of chunk out of you. I don' think they realize it, but it's like 'grrr do this, grr do that' But you do want to stay intact-intact and on two feet.

You may give them your love, but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts.

Human freedom is realised in the adoption of humanity as an end in itself, for the one thing that no-one can be compelled to do by another is to adopt a particular end. - 'Metaphysical Principles of Virtue

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

Every woman should be in control of the decisions that affect her own health.

Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason.

I have this complicated procedure I go through every morning, which is to look in the mirror and decide what I'm going to do. And I feel at that point, everybody's had their say.

The animals were happy as they had never conceived it possible to be. Every mouthful of food was an acute positive pleasure, now that it was truly their own food, produced by themselves and for themselves, not doled out to them by a grudging master.

You shape your perceptions, or someone shapes them for you. You do what you want to do, or you respond to someone else's plan for you.

People learn more on their own rather than being force fed.

He who obeys, does not listen to himself!

Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.

I am not willing to be drawn further into the toils. I cannot accede to the acceptance of gifts upon terms which take the educational policy of the university out of the hands of the Trustees and Faculty and permit it to be determined by those who give money.

I am not a person to be pressured - by anybody or any nation.

It is mine to give to whom I will, like my heart.

We must learn to be self-reliant and independent of schools, courts, protection and patronage of a Government we seek to end, if it will not mend.

What I do with my life is of my own doing. I live it the best way I can. I've been criticized on many, many occasions, because of - acquaintances, and what have you.

Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

A wise man does nothing by constraint.

Leave us to our free election.

Yet where is your inner value when you no longer know what it is to breathe freely; when you no longer have freedom over your own selves

The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.

Who is he that shall control me? Why may not I act and speak and write and think with entire freedom? What am I to the universe, or, the unvierse, what is it to me? Who hath forged the chains of wrong and right, of Opinion and Custom? And must I wear them?

Instead of taking the reader by the hand and running him down the hill, I want to lead him into a house of many rooms, and leave him alone in each of them.

I make all my own decisions and I take full responsibility.

A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man's crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius.

I sought the advice and cooperation from all those around me- but not permission.

This liberty is all that I request.

I've had meetings where a guy actually told me, "What we're trying to figure out is how we can control you." In the meeting, to me! Why do you want to control me?

A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.

Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.

Every man is an infinitely repelling orb, and holds his individual being on that condition.

Do what you want to do, when you want to do it ... and not a moment sooner.

I'm the luckiest guy in the world in terms of what I do for a living. No one can tell me to do things I don't believe in or things I think are stupid.

It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx.

Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.

Freedom in the practical sense is the independence of the power of choice from necessitation by impulses of sensibility

The Chinese in this country aren't asking for integration.

What I do with my life is of my own doing. I live it the best way I can.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

I am lord of myself, accountable to none.

Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself.

You are very kind in planning presents for me to make, and my mother has shown me exactly the same attention; but as I do not choose to have generosity dictated to me, I shall not resolve on giving my cabinet to Anna till the first thought of it has been my own.

I've always discovered things for myself, in marvelous freedom.

Direct not him whose way himself will choose;'Tis breath not lack'st, and that breath wilt thou lose.