Quotes about autonomy
Daniel H. Pink -
Control leads to compliance autonomy leads to engagement.
Kate Chopin - The Awakening
She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves… They belonged to her her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and they they concerned no one but herself.
Zeena Schreck -
A unifying factor between the different traditions and lineages of Tantra, is that it is feminine in nature. It acknowledges the feminine as the basis from which all the practices spring. Therefore, Tantra is by its nature, the understanding that all phenomenal existence, the universe, or cosmos, that we experience is feminine in nature.
Zeena Schreck -
There are Tantrics who deliberately break taboos and social norms and then there are other Tantrics who, by means of their practices and the way that they practice, that to society in general, it may have the appearance of breaking social norms but in fact that is just the manifestation of the progress of their practice.
Fulton J. Sheen - Life of Christ
If, in his pride, he considers God as a challenge, he will deny Him; and if God becomes man and therefore makes Himself vulnerable, he will crucify Him.
Louise O'Neill - Only Ever Yours
Why, isabel? Why are you doing this to yourself? To your
Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Such journeys have convinced me that it is not always possible to restore one's boundaries after they have been blurred and made permeable by a relationship: try as we might, we cannot reconstitute ourselves as the autonomous beings we previously imagined ourselves to be.
A.R. Braun - Autonomy
I know mine own!
Patrick Califia-Rice - Some Women
S/M flies in the face of every attempt the state makes to appropriate our bodies, our labor, our time, and our imaginations.…the state is deeply offended by any group of people who say, 'My body doesn't belong to you, it belongs to me, so fuck off'…
Suzanne Keys - Person-Centred Practice: The BAPCA Reader
Person-centred counselling may be thought of as 'not enough'. In my experience it is. It allows for self-determination through an acknowledgement of a person's human rights.
Hazel Blackthorn - His Brother's Keeper
Why do you live out here? You're a great healer; you could get work in the inner city if you wanted to. Even in E-star, I bet." "Well, I just don't want to live anywhere else," She looked up, smiling so that the lines at the edges of her eyes crinkled. As she looked out into the expanse of endless desert that led up to the crater wall, she seemed as though her thoughts were far away. "This place is our home. It was my mother's home, and her mother's before that. This is what we know, and even t
Atul Gawande -
We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love. That remains the main problem and paradox for the frail. Many of the things that we want for those we care about are things that we would adamantly oppose for ourselves because they would infringe upon our sense of self.
Thomas Szasz -
The proverb warns that, 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
Alice MIller - The Drama of the gifted child
True autonomy is preceded by the experience of being dependent. True liberation can be found only beyond the deep ambivalence of infantile dependence.
Marlon Brando -
There's a line in the picture where he (Johnny - The Wild One) snarls, 'Nobody tells me what to do.' That's exactly how I've felt all my life.
Aletheia Luna - Psychological and Spiritual Healing
As highly sensitive individuals, we simply cannot stand feeling trapped, constricted or smothered in any way. We highly value our freedom and autonomy, making us particularly prone to staying single for long periods of time.
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well.The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and everyday confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.
A.E. Samaan -
Nine out of ten eugenicists in the 20th Century were also Progressives or Socialists, as central to the eugenic creed is the desire to engineer and centrally plan human reproduction and heredity. These were not people that believed in individual liberty. They certainly didn't believe the individual had the right to chose their own mate freely. They were statists, They were totalitarians at heart.
Janet Mock - Love & So Much More
My family subscribed to this rigid belief system. They were unaware of the reality that gender, like sexuality, exists on a spectrum. By punishing me, they were performing the socially sanctioned practice of hammering the girl out of me, replacing her with tenets of gender-appropriate behavior. Though I would grow up to fit neatly into the binary, I believe in self-determination, autonomy, in people having the freedom to proclaim who they are and define gender for themselves. Our genders are as
Judith Thurman -
And that may be [Helen Gurley] Brown’s most enlightened lesson: that sexual autonomy and fulfillment are inseparable from the autonomy and fulfillment that a woman gets from her career.
Paul Bowles - The Spider's House
The insistent drums were an unwelcome reminder of the existence of another world, wholly autonomous, with its own necessities and patterns. The message they were beating out, over and over, was for her; it was saying, not precisely that she did not exist but rather that it did not matter whether she existed or not, that her presence was of no consequence to the rest of the cosmos. It was a sensation that suddenly paralyzed her with dread. There had never been any question of her “mattering”; it
Harold Bloom - The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages
At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.
Kilroy J. Oldster - Dead Toad Scrolls
Human beings possess the gift of personal freedom and liberty of the mind. We each possess the sovereignty over the body and mind to define ourselves and embrace the values that we wish to exemplify. Personal autonomy enables humans to take independent action and use reason to establish moral values. We are part of nature. Consciousness, human cognition, and awareness of our own mortality allow us to script an independent survival reality and not merely react to environmental forces.
Zeena Schreck -
We are against ignorance. We feel that you have to educate yourself, no matter what the situation is. People who refuse to educate themselves - people who refuse to find out what something is about, that they're frightened of - find comfort in being ignorant.”--Zeena Schreck Interview for KJTV-1990
Gurcharan Das - The Difficulty of Being Good : On the Subtle Art of Dharma
Despite the many occasions when its characters feel frustrated before the weight of circumstances, and despite blaming their feeling of impotence on daiva, 'fate', moral autonomy shines through in the epic. Because they have some freedom to choose they can be praised when they follow dharma or blamed when they follow adharma. At the moment of making a decision they become conscious of their freedom, and it is this perception of autonomy that gives them the ability to lead authentic moral lives.
Christopher Hitchens - A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq
If the Bahreini royal family can have an embassy, a state, and a seat at the UN, why should the twenty-five million Kurds not have a claim to autonomy? The alleviation of their suffering and the assertion of their self-government is one of the few unarguable benefits of regime change in Iraq. It is not a position from which any moral retreat would be allowable.
Gabrielle Roth - Maps to Ecstasy
If you just set people in motion they'll heal themselves.
A.R. Braun - Autonomy
I know mine own!"--Walter Emmett Velvet, the Antichrist
Antonio Negri - Declaration
Why do you accept being treated like an inmate?
James C. Scott - Dignity and Meaningful Work and Play
The petite bourgeoise and small property in general represent a precious zone of autonomy and freedom in state systems increasingly dominated by large public and private bureaucracies.
Jaime Manrique -
I thought of Bobby, of the last look he had given me, and at that moment I understood one of the differences between man and cat: man knows he's going to die, so he can get ready and be willing, even eager, to go. A cat knows the end is near, but that's all. He can't accept death: he can't trust in it; cats are perhaps too metaphysical an entity to need to believe in the idea of a beyond; a cat is his own god and man his creation.
Danny Mekić -
Privacy’ is an unusable term. We should instead talk about freedom, autonomy and self-determination of the individual. Being allowed to be yourself, to think whatever you want and to act within the law with no hindrance. That resonates with everyone.
Daniel H. Pink -
... In a ROWE* people don't have schedules.They show up when they want.They don't have to be in the office at certain time, or anytime.They just have to get their work done.How they do it ?When they do it ?Where they do it ?It's totally up to them.Meetings & this kind of environments are Optional.What happens ... ?Almost across the board !- Productivity goes up- Worker Engagement goes up- Worker Satisfaction goes up- Turnovers goes down- Autonomy .. Mastery .. Purpose -these are the building blo
Ayn Rand -
Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience—that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible—that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distingu
James Jones - From Here to Eternity
Up until then it had only been himself. Up to then it had been a private wrestle between him and himself. Nobody else much entered into it. After the people came into it he was, of course, a different man. Everything had changed then and he was no longer the virgin, with the virgin's right to insist upon platonic love. Life, in time, takes every maidenhead, even if it has to dry it up; it does not matter how the owner wants to keep it. Up to then he had been the young idealist. But he could not
Eve Ensler -
Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing.
Thomas Szasz - Addicts and Pushers
Malcolm X and Edmund Burke shared an appreciation of this important insight, this painful truth--that the state wants men to be weak and timid, not strong and proud.
Thomas Szasz - Addicts and Pushers
It is mainly by resisting authority that the individual defines himself. This is why authorities--whether parental, priestly, political, or psychiatric--must be careful how and where they assert themselves; for while it is true that the more they assert themselves the more they govern, it is also true that the more they assert themselves the more opportunities they offer for being successfully denied.
A.E. Samaan -
FUCK "UNITY"!! What a pathetic way of thinking. How arrogant of Progressives to think that my hopes and dreams mirror their hopes and dreams. What an absolute bore.... what an total lack of originality or individuality... I believe in individual liberty. I am an extremist on the topic of individual liberty, precisely because I value original thinking and original accomplishments. Fuck unity of purpose. Fuck collectivism. My life is not your life. I have my own path. Get out of my way.
G.K. Chesterton - Heretics
What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people.
Madeleine L'Engle -
Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.
Monica Bellucci -
As a woman I am so curious about prostitutes because of the idea that they know men better than you. Also, it's such a strange way to live. But at the same time there are prostitutes who just want to be prostitutes, and this is this woman, nobody pushed her to do it. She's a prostitute because she wants to be a prostitute. It's her philosophy of life.
Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass
Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.You must travel it by yourself.It is not far. It is within reach.Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.
Richelle E. Goodrich - Making Wishes
Freedom is essential to the pursuit of happiness. Freedom is essential to artistic evolution and expression. Freedom is essential to the expansion of the human mind. Freedom is essential to the development and application of basic humanitarianism.Freedom is essential to the creation of an individual's will, motivations, preferences, and unique talents. In essence, freedom is essential to the success and progress of humanity.
George Lakoff - Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought
Cognitive science has something of enormous importance to contribute to human freedom: the ability to learn what our unconscious conceptual systems are like and how our cognitive unconscious functions. If we do not realize that most of our thought is unconscious and that we think metaphorically, we will indeed be slaves to the cognitive unconscious. Paradoxically, the assumption that we have a radically autonomous rationality as traditionally conceived actually limits our rational autonomy. It c
Peter Marshall - Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism
With their concern for personal autonomy and individual freedom, anarchists more than any other socialists are aware of the inhumanity of both physical punishment and manipulative cure for anti-social members of the community. They look to reasoned argument and friendly treatment to deal with criminals and wish to respect their humanity and individuality.
Ernst Jünger - Eumeswil
The anarch is (I am simplifying) on the side of gold: it fascinates him, like everything that eludes society. Gold has its own immeasurable might. It need only show itself, and society with its law and order is in jeopardy.The anarch is on the side of gold : this is not to be construed as a lust for gold. He recognizes gold as the central and immobile power. He loves it, not like Cortez, but like Montezuma, not like Pizarro but like Atahualpa ....
Ernst Jünger - Eumeswil
A basic theme for the anarch is how man, left to his own devices, can defy superior forces – whether state, society, or the elements – by making use of their rules without submitting to them.‘It is strange,’ Sir William Parry wrote when describing the igloos on Winter Island, ‘it is strange to think that all these measure are taken against the cold – and in houses of ice.
Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski -
Individualism turns a band into a society. Collectivism turns society into a mob.
Tracy Anne Warren - The Accidental Mistress
To give herself a measure of credible autonomy, she had decided to invent a husband. Then, in a subsequent flash of inspiration, she had just as quickly killed him off.
Heide Schönemann - Vorbilder
With an evermore increase of industrialisation machine stops being merely a tool, develops a life of its own and imposes its rhythm onto human. Operating it he moves mechanically, becomes part of the machine.
Zeena Schreck -
Nostalgia is an illness for those who haven't realized that todayis tomorrow's nostalgia.
Zeena Schreck -
In order to understand why one chooses to be a Tantric practitioner, there has to be an understanding of cause and effect, cyclic existence, the awareness that the reality that we think we are seeing is not reality as it really truly is. So enlightenment is seeing reality with bare awareness, non-conceptual reality.
N.T. Wright -
When God “saves” people in this life, by working through His Spirit to bring them to faith, and by leading them to follow Jesus in discipleship, prayer, holiness, hope and love, such people are designed – it isn’t too strong a word – to be a sign and foretaste of what God wants to do for the entire cosmos. What’s more, such people are not just to be a sign and foretaste of that ultimate “salvation”; they are to be part of the means by which God makes this happen in both the present and the futur
Jonathan Glover - Causing Death and Saving Lives
The first step away from being manipulated, and towards a more autonomous outlook, is to stand back from a set of responses and think.
Ivan Illich - The Right to Useful Unemployment and Its Professional Enemies
Work done off the paid job is looked down upon if not ignored. autonomous activity threatens the employment level, generates deviance, and detracts from the GNP...Work no longer means the creation of a value perceived by the worker but mainly a job, which is a social relationship. Unemployment means sad idleness, rather than the freedom to do things that are useful for oneself or for one's neighbour. An active woman who runs a house and brings up children and takes in those of others is disting
A.E. Samaan -
Legalize the right to choose wrong.Legalize individual liberty.
Danny Mekić -
Privacy’ is an unusable term. We should instead talk about freedom, autonomy and self-determination of the individual. Being allowed to be yourself, to think whatever you want and to act within the law with no hindrance. That resonates with everyone.
Richelle E. Goodrich - Making Wishes
You made me laugh at your jokes.You made me cry at your criticism.You made me shout at your lies.Then I noticed how in every case someone else was present, hearing you without laughter or tears or anger.I alone reacted.I see now; you never made me laugh or cry or rage.I chose to find humor.I chose to take offense.I chose to feel scorned.The truth is, you never had power over me.
Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass
Come, said my SoulSuch verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)That should I after death invisibly return,Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,There to some group of mates the chants resuming,(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)Ever with pleas’d smiles I may keep on,Ever and ever yet the verses owning — as, first, I here and now,Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,
Michael Bassey Johnson -
You do not attain success when you associate with those in high positions, It comes when you accept yourself and realize that only you can take yourself to where your heart truly lies.
Philip K. Dick - Philip K. Dick: The Last Interview and Other Conversations
The greatest power one human being can exert over others is to control their perceptions of reality, and infringe on the integrity and individuality of their world. This is done in politics, in psychotherapy.
Angela Phillips -
It is not commercial success but originality and proof of autonomy which are admired.
Annie Dillard - An American Childhood
Father had stretched out his long legs and was tilting back in his chair. Mother sat with her knees crossed, in blue slacks, smoking a Chesterfield. The dessert dishes were still on the table. My sisters were nowhere in evidence. It was a warm evening; the big dining-room windows gave onto blooming rhododendrons. Mother regarded me warmly. She gave me to understand that she was glad I had found what I had been looking for, but that she and father were happy to sit with their coffee, and would n
Howard Zinn -
I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.
Ernst Jünger - Eumeswil
Dalin must have whiffed the anarch in me, a man with no ties to state or society. Still, he was unable to sense an autonomy that puts up with these forces as objective facts but without recognizing them. What he lacked was a grounding in history.Opposition is collaboration; this was something from which Dalin, without realizing it, could not stay free. Basically, he damaged order less than he confirmed it. The emergence of the anarchic nihilist is like a goad that convinces society of its unity.
Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski -
The surest way to damage society is to call for a "great man" to lead it. The surest way to improve society is to become a great man to lead oneself and convince others to do likewise.
Jiddu Krishnamurti -
Do not repeat after me words that you do not understand. Do not merely put on a mask of my ideas, for it will be an illusion and you will thereby deceive yourself.
Zeena Schreck -
The material world is all feminine. The feminine engergy makes the non-manifest, manifest. So even men (are of the feminine energy). We have to relinquish our ideas of gender in the conventional sense. This has nothing to do with gender, it has to do with energy. So feminine energy is what creates and allows anything which is non-manifest, like an idea, to come into form, into being, to be born. All that we experience in the world around us, absolutely everything (is feminine energy). The only w
Zeena Schreck -
There are Tantrics who deliberately seek to do more active forms of renunciation, so transgression of social norms and breaking of taboo, and breaking of social taboos especially, is a form of renunciation.
Emily Dickinson -
How happy is the little stoneThat rambles in the road alone,And doesn't care about careers,And exigencies never fears;Whose coat of elemental brownA passing universe put on;And independent as the sun,Associates or glows alone,Fulfilling absolute decreeIn casual simplicity.
Michael Bassey Johnson - The Infinity Sign
If you truly want to be respected by people you love, you must prove to them that you can survive without them.
Coco Chanel -
It’s probably not just by chance that I’m alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless he’s terribly strong. And if he’s stronger than I, I’m the one who can’t live with him. … I’m neither smart nor stupid, but I don’t think I’m a run-of-the-mill person. I’ve been in business without being a businesswoman, I’ve loved without being a woman made only for love. The two men I’ve loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused
Thomas Ligotti - Songs of a Dead Dreamer
And one thing we know is real: horror. It is so real, in fact, that we cannot be sure it could not exist without us. Yes, it needs our imaginations and our consciousness, but it does not ask or require our consent to use them. Indeed, horror operates with complete autonomy. Generating ontological havoc, it is mephitic foam upon which our lives merely float. And, all said, we must face up to it: horror is more real than we are.