#Self Respect Quotes

“Men's eyes were made to look, and let them gaze. I will not budge for no man's pleasure.”

“Love yourself; and in that love not unconsidered leave your honor.”

“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.”

“How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.”

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

“There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect.”

“People treat us the way we teach them to treat us.”

“One cannot pay the price of self-respect.”

“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.”

“Perhaps the greatest mistake we can make, which causes loss of self-respect, is making the opinions of others more important than our own opinion of ourselves. You'll find no shortage of opinions directed at you. If you allow them to undermine your self-respect, you're seeking the respect of others over your own, and you're abdicating yourself.”

“When I was in high school, I remember seeing girls crying in the bathroom every Monday about what they did that weekend. I never wanted to be that girl crying in the bathroom.”

“I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it's a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.”

“Let a man then know his worth and keep things under his feet.”

“I don't compare myself to anyone else; I don't make comments about anyone else because they do what feels right for them, and that's okay by me.”

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

“One insult pocketed soon produces another.”

“Anything that encourages pauperism, anything that relaxes the manly fiber and lowers self-respect, is an unmixed evil.”

“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.”

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

“But dare rather to quit the platform, plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, & swim far, so shall you come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience, that shall explain & overlook the old. Trust your emotion.”

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

“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.”

“An occasional compliment is necessary to keep up one's self-respect.”

“I cannot be subservient anywhere.”

“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.'”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one's self-respect.”

“I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.”

“Never whine. Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.”

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

“Reduce your humanity through what Jules Feiffer called little murders. The minute I hear someone trying to demean me, I know that that person means to have my life. And I will not give it to them. When a person commits these little murders, and then you catch him or her at it, he or she might say, "Oh, I didn't mean it." But make no mistake: It is an assassination attempt.”

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

“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.”

“You teach people how to treat you.”

“Self-respect knows no considerations.”

“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.”

“A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.”

“To yield to the threat or actual use of violence is a surrender of one's self respect and religious conviction.”

“I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable; but my friend is my amiableness personified.”

“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.”

“If you are left with only one piece of homespun,wear it with dignity”

“The nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage they did not know they had.”

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

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

“If we were strong, self-respecting and not susceptible to frightfulness, the foreign rulers would have been powerless for mischief.”

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

“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.”

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