164 Agency Quotes

A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with - a man is what he makes of himself.

General, your tank is a powerful vehicle it smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men. but it has one defect: it needs a driver.

There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselves from the responsibility for acts which are prompted by our own questionable inclinations and impulses.

I'm kind of an accidental instrument, really, through which I hope that the judgment and the will of this nation can be expressed.

[After a poor prognosis for recovery from her doctor following her 1990 bus accident] I said if it is up to me, I'm going to be OK.

You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.

The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.

Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality, an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable of it. There is nothing moral or immoral in the idea of it. The definition of it is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power; it can elect between objects, indifferent in point of morality, neither morally good nor morally evil.

We are no longer puppets being manipulated by outside powerful forces: we become the powerful force ourselves.

I don't think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good.

Unless you choose to do great things with it, it makes no difference how much you are rewarded, or how much power you have.

Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.

Contingency is rich and fascinating; it embodies an exquisite tension between the power of individuals to modify history and the intelligible limits set by laws of nature. The details of individual and species's lives are not mere frills, without power to shape the large-scale course of events, but particulars that can alter entire futures, profoundly and forever.

The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.

Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.

I believe we're responsible for everything that happens to us.

To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate.

Personal power is the ability to take action.

We are the only beings on the planet who lead such rich internal lives that it's not the events that matter most to us, but rather, it's how we interpret those events that will determine how we think about ourselves and how we will act in the future.

We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish.

You always succeed in producing a result.

To hell with circumstances. I create opportunities.

When it comes to luck you make your own.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced - by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.

No cause has he to say his doom is harsh, Who's made the master of his destiny.

Live with your century; but do not be its creature.

Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.

Man is a free agent; but he is not free if he does not believe it[.]

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

'Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us.'

Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.

If it all just happens like this for the rest of my life, it's going to be one endless Groundhog Day. I determined that I was not prepared to submit to this regime, so I thought I had to do something about it.

'Yes,' said Peter, 'I suppose what makes it feel so queer is that in the stories it's always someone in our world who does the calling. One doesn't really think about where the Jinn's coming from.' 'And now we know what it feels like for the Jinn,' said Edmund with a chuckle. 'Golly! It's a bit uncomfortable to know that we can be whistled for like that. It's worse than what Father says about living at the mercy of the telephone.'

It doesn't matter how one was brought up. What determines the way one does anything is personal power.

We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.

I'm not going to ask for anything unless the workers want it. If they want it, they'll ask for it.

It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we will use our limited time on earth. It is an awesome opportunity.

'You seek up a big monster for him to fight your wars for you'

You wait for fate to bring about the changes in life which you should be bringing about yourself.

Destiny is what we work toward. The future doesn't exist yet. Fate is for losers.

The people are asleep; they remain indifferent. They forge their own chains and do the bidding of their masters to crucify their Christs. (p. 304)

It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.

Every gesture is a revolutionary act.

No, no, no. This was the system. Wirth had invented it. It worked. And because it worked, it was irreversible.

A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away.

That which is in a man, not that which lies beyond his vision is the main factor in what is about to befall him: the operation upon him is the event.

Women have somehow been separated from their libido, from their faculty of desire, from their sexuality. They've become suspicious about it. Like beasts, for example, who are castrated in farming in order to serve their master's ulterior motives - to be fattened or made docile - women have been cut off from their capacity for action. It's a process that sacrifices vigour for delicacy and succulence, and one that's got to be changed.

Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance.

I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.

As a professor, I tended to think of history as run by impersonal forces. But when you see it in practice, you see the difference personalities make.

Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.

Human freedom is realised in the adoption of humanity as an end in itself, for the one thing that no-one can be compelled to do by another is to adopt a particular end.

One is either judge or accused. The judge sits, the accused stands. Live on your feet.

Fantasies aren't reality, I know, I know, I know. Except when they are. Except when you make them into reality.

You whisper, 'You have loved enough, Now let me be the Lover.'

I want to seize fate by the throat.

God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.

We can remake the world daily.

What makes community organizing especially attractive is the faith it places in the ability of the poor to make decisions for themselves.

Can anyone alter fate? All of us combined...or one great figure...or someone strategically placed, who happens to be in the right spot. Chance. Accident. And our lives, our world, hanging on it.

:[T]o whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me? And wait until I reveal how truly irresponsible I am. Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form of agreement.

Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have a chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.

I agree with Ron Paul, we marched in there, we can march out.

What has value in their eyes is never what is done for them; it's what they do for themselves.

How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.

... life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; ... it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it's as though you aren't there.

We can see that in putting the question 'what is man?' what we mean is: what can man become? That is, can man dominate his own destiny, can he 'make himself,' can he create his own life? We maintain therefore that man is a process and, more exactly, the process of his actions. If you think about it, the question itself 'what is man?' is not an abstract or 'objective' question. It is born of our reflection about ourselves and about others, and we want to know, in relation to what we have thought and seen, what we are and what we can become; whether we really are, and if so to what extent, 'makers of our own selves,' of our life and of our destiny. And we want to know this 'today,' in the given conditions of today, the conditions of our daily life, not of any life or any man

You don't have to buy from anyone. You don't have to work at any particular job. You don't have to participate in any given relationship. You can choose

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