Quotes about self-determination

I don't know who my grandfather was I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

Focus! (said a voice within me). We are here to craft emotions. To become a better person. Not to waste our serenity on someone who had a poor upbringing and are not taught manners.

There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.

Every man has within him only one life and one nature ... It behooves a man to look within himself and turn to the best dedication possible those endowments he has from his Maker. You do no wrong in questioning what once you held to be right for you, if now it has come to seem wrong. Put away all thought of being bound. We do not want you bound. No one who is not free can give freely.

[F]rom my years of understanding ... I happily chose this kind of life in which I yet live [i.e., unmarried], which I assure you for my own part hath hitherto best contented myself and I trust hath been most acceptable to God. From the which if either ambition of high estate offered to me in marriage by the pleasure and appointment of my prince ... or if the eschewing of the danger of my enemies or the avoiding of the peril of death ... could have drawn or dissuaded me from this kind of life, I

Self-questioning is the road to personal liberation and spiritual enlightenment. Self-questioning spurs the mind to consider new opportunities to arrive at truth.

A person must escape artificial constraints and unfold the myth of their own being. There is only one path for a thinking person in life, and that is to assume the role of a compassionate observer. I can only achieve personal freedom – liberty of the mind, body, and soul – by stop worrying about how other people perceive me and no longer judge myself in terms of fame and fortune.

We are condemned to be free people, liberated people who must make life-defining decisions. Freedom requires choices and all choices entail value decisions.

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.

Act as if it was and it will be.

You have to believe in your dreams.

Work hard to fulfill your dreams.

It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.

You can do anything you want. You don't believe me. You think, she's out of her head. Yeah, I'm out of my head- on being me. What are you on? On being them. You don't even know. I bet you were never given a chance to know. ....Listen. You can be anything you want to be. Be careful. It's a spell. It's magic. Listen to the words.... You are anything...everyone, anyone. ...You listen to them, teachers, parents, politicians. They're always saying, if you steal you're a thief, if you sleep aroung you

There are some who want to get married and others who don't. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead.

What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls"; if the answer is, "But I don't," there is no more to be said.

You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.

The greatest energy must be use for work.

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.

I'm single because I was born that way.

Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.

I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.

Look forward, in the direction of sunshine.

Life is still better than University. In school, your teacher is the fruit picker and you are the open fruit basket. Then you take those fruits and make cakes and pies. But life is going to give you the chance to go out there and pick those fruits yourself. Then you can eat them, or make them into something else; any which way, your own hands picked them!

Concentrate and complete the journey.

The greatest gift for yourself is to study to the highest degree.

I wonder how many books you have read?

Awake. Reach out. Press onward.

May you find the confidence and courage to climb new heights.

Possibilities exist for you, to educate yourself, to the highest degree.

Make time to read.

How the story will end, no one knows? We can only envisage.

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.

It may take little time to get where you want to be, but if you pause and think for a moment, you will notice that you are no longer where you were. Do not stop—keep going.

My life is build around books.

It can be done. It will be done.

Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might to … my own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown-instincts, no matter how great the storm. And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've fished in it for my art. This turbulen

Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will

I’d like them to appreciate the power of the individual—and I don’t mean me; I mean the power each person has to make choices and be accountable for himself or herself. I’ve noticed that people are quick to put you in a category—if you come from this place then you are that thing. But I’ve never placed much value in statistics and trends, bar graphs and socioeconomic data that sum people up. I stop listening when somebody asks me if I know what my chances are. I don’t know that I believe in prob

LEONATOWell, then, go you into hell?BEATRICENo, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.

LEONATOWell, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.BEATRICENot till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.

If [God] send me no husband, for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening ...

If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.

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

The best way to predict your future is to create it.

It's not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life, it's what you whisper to yourself that has the most power!

Oh the places you'll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all.

Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself.

I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.

Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.(Popular misquote of "You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.")

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.

The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don't let them put you in that position.

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

I felt the taste of mortality in my mouth, and at that moment I understood that I was not going to live forever. It takes a long time to learn that, but when you finally do, everything changes inside you, you can never be the same again. I was seventeen years old, and all of a sudden, without the slightest flicker of a doubt, I understood that my life was my own, that it belonged to me and no one else.I’m talking about freedom, Fogg. A sense of despair that becomes so great, so crushing, so cata

The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.

Is it better to work out consciously and critically one's own conception of the world and thus, in connection with the labours of one's own brain, choose one's sphere of activity, take an active part in the creation of the history of the world, be one's own guide, refusing to accept passively and supinely from outside the moulding of one' own personality?

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.

Feeding the ego is starving the wisdom, the choice is yours.

If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door

Milton's Eve! Milton's Eve! ... Milton tried to see the first woman; but Cary, he saw her not ... I would beg to remind him that the first men of the earth were Titans, and that Eve was their mother: from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion, Oceanus; she bore Prometheus" --"Pagan that you are! what does that signify?""I say, there were giants on the earth in those days: giants that strove to scale heaven. The first woman's breast that heaved with life on this world yielded the daring which could contend

Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others ... Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth."(Journal entry, 14 October 1922)

When you increase in learning and education, you increase your ability to act, and you have a chance to improve your circumstances.

Play the game of life, without any fear.

Everything that happens in your future is a direct result of what you do today.

The power you give others belongs to you. Take it back and take yourself where you would go.

May God grant you more grace, strength and wisdom.

Freedom is the grace of free-will.

Reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.

Each of us is the enactor of our personal saga; we create the phantom of the self. We are the principal character in our personal story, as well as witnesses and reactors to the storylines of other persons whom we adore. We are each the composers of our evolving personal story; we are the protagonist of our personal life story.

We hold within ourselves the medicinal materials to mend self-inflicted injuries sustained while traversing the thorny obstacle course of life.

Self-healing requires tremendous action, a willingness to go beyond the normative to discover something transcending.

Our lives are nothing but a short span of time. And if we spend tons of time earning money that we simply throw away, then we're throwing away part of our potential.

A young woman faces the decision of whether to marry a certain man whom she loves but who has deeply rooted, traditional ideas concerning marriage, family life, and the roles of men and women in each. A sober assessment of her future tell the woman that each of the two alternatives offers real but contrasting goods. One life offers the possibility of a greater degree of personal independence, the chance to pursue a career, perhaps more risk and adventure, while the other offers the rewards of pa

Be enthusiastic about your life.

Listening to music, reading literature, writing, and extended periods of personal introspection provide four prongs of the incitements available to form a conscious and subconscious designation of self. Other potential incentives that contribute to self-identity include religion and cultural events as well as painting, sculpture, dance, films, newspapers, television, Internet surfing, web sites, and online message boards.

Dance to the music of your soul.

We write to give strength to our soul and to inspire spirit of other souls.

Be motivated.

Whatever you desire is possible. You only need to begin dreaming.

Daily inspiration is uplifting to the spirit.

If you want money, you must work to earn it.

Idealistic notions that guide a younger person frequently prove unsustainable. Concluding any stage of life demands that a person rebuilds oneself after living destroys our ideological beliefs.

A person is not born as a finished product; we create ourselves every day. Resembling reality, no person is a fixed and unchangeable entity. Each of us is in the process of becoming. A person’s perspective on their life experiences depends upon reviewing and integrating an emotional gamut of reconciling values with applied effort.

A restless human heart always seeks to increase personal understanding and works to attain excellence.

Human being’s possess the cognitive ability to survey and study the biological and cultural constraints that influence us in order to gain an enhanced understanding of who each of us are. Comprehension of what comprises a self allows human beings to monitor and regulate their thoughts and actions and therefore revise and modify their sense of self. How much conscious control we assert over our minds as well as what decisions through default we leave essentially unregulated and in the sole provid

We search our entire lives to create a genuine and reliable self that can relate with other people and faithfully express our artistic temperament. Our battle for personal authenticity requires us to penetrate layers of self-deception, conquer ego defense mechanism, and destroy a false self that is intent upon meeting other people’s expectations.

Not the kind of person, who believes that it is best to believe, that what happened, happened as it should happen when things don't come as expected.

The most important thing in life it to be true to ourselves, to never give up attempting to become the very finest version of what we wish to be, no matter how arduous that proves to be.

A person begins to live a moral life when they cease asking what life will provide them and begins to determine what he or she expects from oneself.