Autonomy Quotes

Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them.

We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws.

The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.

I had to use my wits or else I'd have been sunk - and nothings going to sink me. Everyone was always pulling at me, tugging at me, as if they wanted a piece of me. It was always, 'do this, do that,' and not just on the job but off, too. God, I've tried to stay intact, whole.

A person who is wise does nothing against their will, nothing with sighing or under coercion.

No one has a right to obstruct another exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature.

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

I've never turned to anybody for advice and counsel. Even when I was a very small child, I had to stand on my feet because of the circumstances of those times, and somehow, the circumstances have remained more or less the same. I have to take my own decisions.

You must be the best judge of your own happiness.

Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else's head?

That's really a part of my nature , it goes along with autonomy and independence of action - it's just that I don't identify with the local group, no matter what it is, whether it's the human species or the American democracy, the nation, the country, religions, political parties, nothing. None of these have my allegiance because I'm not really concerned with what they do. I don't feel a part of any of this.

Give me a country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a government that does not understand you to let you alone.

No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

The lover must often say, "I love because I must, because I will it. I love for myself, not for others. I love for the joy it gives me - and incedentally, only - for that joy it gives to others. If they reinforce me it will be good. If they do not, it also will be good, for I will to love."

I don't care how little your country is, you got a right to run it like you want to. When the big nations quit meddling then the world will have peace.

Whoever has not two-thirds of his time to himself, is a slave.

All artists need a room of their own

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.

Money enables us to get what we want instead of what other people think we want.

No one can tell me what is a good cigar - for me. I am the only judge. People who claim to know say that I smoke the worst cigars in the world. They bring their own cigars when they come to my house.

If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue?

With respect to our friends in the [Iraq] region, each has its own system, each will have to make its own judgment as to whether it will change, how fast it will change, and we hope that we can help influence them as to how change comes about and what change might be better for them than other forms of change.

Like, this is my baby. This isn't America's baby.