Self Respect Quotes

The people who truly know me know what I'm like. There have been people who try to say things that aren't fair, and I check them. And then they don't like me because I checked them.

Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent

There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth going to jail for. I would rather be a free pauper than a rich slave. I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self respect.

You teach people how to treat you.

They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.

When you have more respect for yourself and put yourself in a position where you feel your sense of value or worth, that's how you know you're on the right path.

I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.'

The wise are not so much wiser than others as respecters of their own wisdom.

My work will be finished if I succeed in carrying conviction to the human family that every man or woman, however weak in body, is the guardian of his or her self-respect and liberty.

Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and thereby increase self-respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.

Now, you integration-minded Negroes are trying to force yourselves on your former slave master, trying to make him accept you in his drawing room; you want to hang out with his women rather than the women of your own kind.

We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and -- in spite of True Romance magazines -- we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely -- at least, not all the time -- but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.

Nothing short of self-respect and that justice which is essential to a national character ought to involve us in war.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

We may like well to know what is Plato’s and what is Montesquieu’s or Goethe’s part, and what thought was always dear to the writer himself; but the worth of the sentences consists in their radiancy and equal aptitude to all intelligence. They fit all our facts like a charm. We respect ourselves the more that we know them.

Eat at your own as you would the table of a king.

Self-respect - The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.

I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.

There are two kinds of pride, both good and bad. 'Good pride' represents our dignity and self-respect. 'Bad pride' is the deadly sin of superiority that reeks of conceit and arrogance.

Don't let anybody take your manhood.

I'm grateful to be of use. I will not be misused or abused, but I will be of use to anybody.

Self-respect leads to self-discipline.

I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.

For a man to act himself, he must be perfectly free; otherwise he is in danger of losing all sense of responsibility or of self- respect.

When a man becomes cultivated, he develops a new respect for who he is. This causes him to be ashamed of his past identification of himself and others according to things, i.e. property.

One cannot pay the price of self-respect.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

Those who are content suffer no disgrace.

I encourage courtesy. To accept nothing less than courtesy, and to give nothing less than courtesy. If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

Of course my jokes are in poor taste, inappropriate, and confused; they reveal my lack of security. But that is because I have no respect for myself.

To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect, and their oneness.

The only safe and honorable course for a self-respecting man is to do what I have decided to do, that is, to submit without protest to the penalty of disobedience ... not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience.

A courageous man prefers death to the surrender of self-respect.

Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.

I have just been through the process of killing a cistudo for the sake of science; but I cannot excuse myself for this murder, and see that such actions are inconsistent with the poetic perception, however they may serve science, and will affect the quality of my observations. I pray that I may walk more innocently and serenely through nature. No reasoning whatever reconciles me to this act. It affects my day injuriously. I have lost some self-respect. I have a murderer's experience to a degree.

Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.

Only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one's belly, in order to be able to save one's head.

I cannot be subservient anywhere.

Don't you run around here trying to make friends with somebody who's depriving you of your rights. They're not your friends, no, they're your enemies. Treat them like that.

I don't have the delusion that I'm the best or have the right answer. Whenever someone is out there pissed at you or me, they don't even know you or I. What they are really pissed at is themselves. You might have total respect for them but they don't respect themselves.

The Negro cannot win the respect of his oppressor by acquiescing; he merely increases the oppressor's arrogance and contempt.

If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

It is easiest to "be all things to all men," but it is not honest. Self-respect must be sacrificed every hour in the day.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end... I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

I have never regarded any man as my superior, either in my life outside or inside prison.

Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.

I cannot conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one's self-respect.

Real education enhances the dignity of a human being and increases his or her self-respect. If only the real sense of education could be realized by each individual and carried forward in every field of human activity, the world will be so much a better place to live in.

Since I am convinced that I wrong no one, I am not likely to wrong myself.

Man does not live by bread alone. Many prefer self-respect to food.

...It is a proud privilege to be a soldier – a good soldier … [with] discipline, self-respect, pride in his unit and his country, a high sense of duty and obligation to comrades and to his superiors, and a self confidence born of demonstrated ability.

It is worth the while to live respectably unto ourselves. We can possibly get along with a neighbor, even with a bedfellow, whom we respect but very little; but as soon as it comes to this, that we do not respect ourselves, then we do not get along at all, no matter how much money we are paid for halting.

Not until we dare to regard ourselves as a nation, not until we respect ourselves, can we gain the esteem of others, or rather only then will it come of its own accord

Do we not realize that self respect comes with self reliance?