Self Determination Quotes

Our future is in our hands. Our lives are what we choose to make them.

Be not the slave of your own past.

I traveled a good deal all over the world, and I got along pretty good in all these foreign countries, for I have a theory that it's their country and they got a right to run it like they want to.

Since everybody is an individual, nobody can be you. You are unique. No one can tell you how to use your time. It is yours. Your life is your own. You mold it. You make it.

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

I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.

You are the only one who gets to decide what you will be remembered for.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up.

Peaceful circulation has been interupted by barbed wire and concrete blocks. For a city or a people to be truly free, they must have the secure right, without economic, political or police pressure, to make their own choices and live their own lives.

So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind - it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact - I can only submit to the edict of others.

Resolve to throw off the influences of any unfortunate environment, and to build your own life to order.

I was told many years ago by my grandmother who raised me: If somebody puts you on a road and you don't feel comfortable on it and you look ahead and you don't like the destination and you look behind and you don't want to return to that place, step off the road.

Everything is generated through your own will power. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. This is a democracy. You go where you want to go and do what you want to do.

Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside. Each society must search for its own path, and no path is perfect.

Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncracy of a living being. It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self-determination.

Every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live.

If you make a choice that goes against what everyone else thinks, the world will not fall apart.

Tis in ourselves that we are thus, or thus.

Saudi Arabia will have to decide its own path, and I don't know if it will decide a path like any other nation in the region or if it will design something that is unique to Saudi Arabia.

We all create the person we become by our choices as we go through life. In a real sense, by the time we are adults, we are the sum total of the choices we have made.

Your life is your own. You mold it. You make it. All anyone can do is to point out ways and means which have been helpful to others. Perhaps they will serve as suggestions to stimulate your own thinking until you know what it is that will fulfill you, will help you to find out what you want to do with your life.

It is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it.

I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds. For one thing is sure: If they don't make up their minds, someone will do it for them.

No nation is wise enough to rule another.

I don't care how poor and inefficient a little country is - they like to run their own business. I know men that would -make my wife a better husband than I am but, darn it, I'm not going to give her to 'em.

Just remember that you don't have to be what they want you to be.

Willing sets you free: that is the true doctrine of will and freedom--thus Zarathustra instructs you.

I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and my mother, impatiently, would tell them no. But I would cry out and make a fuss until I got what I wanted. I remember well how my mother asked me why I couldn't be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.

Either define the moment or the moment will define you.

For themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have they have right to hold.

You define your own life. Don't let other people write your script.

Swaraj is our birthright. No one can deprive us of it unless we forfeit it ourselves.

Acknowledge your will and speak to us all, "This alone is what I will to be!" Hang your own penal code up above you: we want to be its enforcers!

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.

You are the author of your own life...Don't let others define it for you. Real power comes by doing what you are meant to be doing, and doing it well.

Lead a life of your own design, on your own terms-not one that others, or the environment havescripted for you.

Every man is captain of his career and there must be cooperation all around if he is to get what he wants out of life.

Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.

All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset, I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try.

Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.

The future inhabitants of [both] the Atlantic and Mississippi states will be our sons. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove otherwise; and if they see their interest in separating why should we take sides? God bless them both, and keep them in union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better.

Each country, if it so desires, will make its own revolution. And if no such desire exists, no revolution will occur.

It's my choice, to choose how to live my life.

This is my life homie, you decide yours

Never allow your enemies to educate your children.

I'm happier. I guess I made up my mind to be that way.

If every component part of the nation claims the right of self-determination for itself, there is no one nation and there is no independence.

The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.

When I'm in management meetings when we're deciding my future, those decisions are left up to me. I'm the one who has to go out and fulfill all these obligations, so I should be able to choose which ones I do or not. That's the part of my life where I feel most in control.

Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.

I made the decision I will own my own show. So never again will I ever be told what I can and can not do.

I'm enormously interested in freedom and retaining the right to have whatever economy we want and to shape it as we want and a having sufficient Democracy so that the people actually hold their Government in their own hands.

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

I just don't believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression.

It's your life-but only if you make it so.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the 'leaders' must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

You have no ambition, I well know. Your wishes are all moderate.' 'As moderate as those of the rest of the world, I believe. I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy, but like every body else it must be in my own way. Greatness will not make me so.

Don't live your life to please other people.

Let us resolve to be masters, not the victims, of our history, controlling our own destiny without giving way to blind suspicions and emotions.

You are responsible for your life. It doesn't matter what your Mama did. It doesn't matter what your Daddy didn't do. You are responsible for your life.