Selected agency quotes

1. Our success or failure is not in the hands of our leaders. It is in our hands.

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

3. Happiness depends upon ourselves.

4. What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.

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

9. Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.

10. Chiefly the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands.

11. [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.

12. Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe.

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

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

15. 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.

16. Everything is what you make of it, even yourself.

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

18. 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.

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

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

21. 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.

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

23. 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.

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

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

26. Personal power is the ability to take action.

27. 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.

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

29. You always succeed in producing a result.

30. To hell with circumstances. I create opportunities.

31. When it comes to luck you make your own.

32. 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.

33. 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.

34. 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.

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

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

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

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

39. 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.

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

41. Sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are in every hand.

42. I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough to truly consecrate the hour. I am much too small in this world, yet not small enough to be to you just object and thing, dark and smart. I want my free will and want it accompanying the path which leads to action; and want during times that beg questions, where something is up, to be among those in the know, or else be alone.

43. We cannot make Events. Our Business is wisely to improve them. There has been much to do to confirm doubting Friends & fortify the Timid. It requires time to bring honest Men to think & determine alike even in important Matters. Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

44. Reader, I married him.

45. Luck is something you make for yourself, if you want it.

46. I am the very slave of circumstance And impulse,-borne away with every breath!

47. Some people skip through life; some people are dragged through it. I sometimes wonder whether we are moving through time of time is moving through us.

48. I don't know why, but something inside me snapped. I started yelling at the top of my lungs, and I insulted him and told him not to waste his prayers on me. I grabbed him by the collar of his cassock. I was pouring out on him everything that was in my heart, cries of anger and cries of joy. He seemed so certain about everything, didn't he? And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman's head. He wasn't even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was the one who'd come up emptyhanded. But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death I had waiting for me. Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me. I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so? It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too.

49. My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun - In Corners - till a Day The Owner passed - identified - And carried Me away - And now We roam in Sovereign Woods - And now We hunt the Doe - And every time I speak for Him - The Mountains straight reply -

50. All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts. -- Socialism, p. 97

51. ...philosophy will not be able to effect an immediate transformation of the present condition of the world. This is not only true of philosophy, but of all merely human thought and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The sole possibility that is left for us is to prepare a sort of readiness, through thinking and poeticizing, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god in the time of foundering Untergang for in the face of the god who is absent, we founder. Only a God Can Save Us.

52. But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: to see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost. When a life spins out as joyfully as mine has done, then the price, once paid so painfully, is now recalled in gladness. I have received full value

53. As long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it. So long as they tramp the streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose sewers they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest the policeman bid them 'move on'; as long as they go from factory to factory, begging for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the insults of bosses and foremen, getting the old 'no,' the old shake of the head, in these factories they built, whose machines they wrought; so long as they consent to herd like cattle, in the cities, driven year after year, more and more, off the mortgaged land, the land they cleared, fertilized, cultivated, rendered of value; so long as they stand shivering, gazing thro' plate glass windows at overcoats, which they made, but cannot buy, starving in the midst of food they produced but cannot have; so long as they continue to do these things vaguely relying upon some power outside themselves, be it god, or priest, or politician, or employer, or charitable society, to remedy matters, so long deliverance will be delayed. When they conceive the possibility of a complete international federation of labor, whose constituent groups shall take possession of land, mines, factories, all the instruments of production, issue their own certificates of exchange, and, in short, conduct their own industry without regulative interference from law-makers or employers, then we may hope for the only help which counts for aught - Self-Help; the only condition which can guarantee free speech (and no paper guarantee needed).

54. A man may well bring a horse to water, But he cannot make him drink without he will.

55. History is not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends.

56. It is the reformer who is anxious for the reforms.

57. Come in, kidnapped child, hostage of fate. Come and talk to the fates, who are playing such clever little games with your life

58. Les heures sont faictez pour l'homme, & non l'homme pour les heures.

59. About a week after it [my bus accident] happened, I said to myself: 'Enough of this. I mean: you can't just let life land on you. Bad things happen of course, but you have to take control of your life.'

60. 'It is not that there is some magic technology. It is what are you going to do with it?'

61. What do you mean 'helped create'? I am Cyrus. I am Cyrus.

62. The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.

63. The future is of our own making - and (for me) the most striking characteristic of the century is just that development, that maturing of our consciousness which should open our eyes to that truth.

64. Life is a creative endeavor. It is active, not passive. We are the yeast that leavens our lives into rich, fully baked loaves. When we experience our lives as flat and lackluster, it is our consciousness that is at fault. We hold the inner key that turns our lives from thankless to fruitful. That key is 'Blessing.'

65. Possunt ac fieri divino numine rentur.

66. We do not only free God by battling and subduing the visible world about us; we also create God. 'Open your eyes,' God shouts; 'I want to see! Prick up your ears, I want to hear! March in the front ranks: you are my head!'

67. But we, O blockhead, with dogged spite and armored love shall force those deaf dark powers to grow ears and hear us! I know that God is earless, eyeless, and heartless too, a brainless Dragon Worm that crawls on earth and hopes in anguish and then in secret that we'll give him soul, for then he, too, may sprout ears, eyes, to match his growth, but God is clay in my ten fingers, and I mould him!

68. Somebody has to roll the dice. Mine are the hands that hold those dice. I'm not a bureaucrat, placing my career above the larger purposes I was put here to serve. I will not put the dice in someone else's hands, or pretend that I don't have the choice I have.

69. What does it matter if, by following my heart, I also fulfill someone else's plan?

70. As long as my body did their bidding, what did it matter what I thought?

71. Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow.

72. Are we like the God of the Old Testament, that we in Washington can decide which cities, towns, and hamlets in Vietnam will be destroyed? Do we have to accept that? I don't think we do. I think we can do something about it.

73. Now it is no longer a matter of deciding what to do, but of deciding how to decide.

74. The daimonic power does not merely take the individual over as its victim, but works through him psychologically, it clouds his judgment, makes it harder for him to see reality, but still leaves HIM with the responsibility for the act.

75. When last comes to last, I have little power: I am merely an urn. I hold the bone-sap of myself, and watch the marrow burn. When last comes to last, I have little strength: I am only a tool. I work its work; and in its hands I am the fool. When last comes to last, I have little life. I am simply a deed: an action done while courage holds: a seed.

76. In my case I slob around in old clothes in the country. But I have the luxury of knowing I can pull myself out of that. So I don't feel bad about looking like shit.

77. Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. If we can bring ourselves down by our karma, surely it is in our power to raise ourselves by our own karma.

78. Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each one of us individually.

79. 'A man, a real man, must never be an agent, a tool, or a gambler - acting for himself or for others - he must employ such. A real man - a financier - is never a tool. He uses tools. He creates. He leads.'

80. I can't save you from yourself, you gotta want it.

81. What we do need to worry about is the possibility that we will be reduced, in the face of the enormities of our time, to silence or to mere protest.'

82. You let men in power assume power 'for the Little Man'. But you yourself remain silent. You give men in power or impotent people with evil intentions the power to represent you. Only too late do you realize that again and again you are being defrauded.

83. At his best, things do not happen to the artist; he happens to them.

84. Variant: I know history will be kind to me. For I intend to write it.

85. Every one of you is the leader.

86. I think we have much more to say about what happens to us than most people believe.

87. You - are not a victim You - just scream with boredom You - are not evicting time

88. That's what's eating you alive. That you aren't the kind of guy who takes the law into his own hands. You left the law in other hands and it screwed you over pretty badly

89. What a heavy burden to bear Heaviest because there's nothing I can do Then it's not your burden, is it? The opposite is true. The burden is heavier precisely because I can't do anything about it

90. Who were they to play god with his life? They had been playing god with his life from the beginning

91. You had no choice No, but you'd be amazed at how often people who have no choice act as if they had one, and lose everything because they could not bear to do what had to be done

92. I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail Yes I would, if I could, I surely would I'd rather be a hammer than a nail Yes I would, if I only could, I surely would

93. You can love 'em till your well runs dry, Belford, but you can never love 'em enough, and you know it. No matter how much others might love you, you can't love yourself unless you're in charge of your own actions, and you'll never take charge as long as you can get away with blaming your shortcomings and misfortunes on your family or society or your race or gender or Satan or whatever:

94. To be a soldier, must maintain composure at ease/Though life is complicated, only what you make it to be

95. [at Rock the Bells, San Francisco, California, 2007] 'Every once in a while, people forget who really has power in this country. People forget who really holds power here, and you look at them helicopters coming in over the White House lawn and all the press gathered up, and all their security, and all their banks, and all their punk ass police, and you want to believe that our last powers there, up top at the center putting forth position in the world, you want to think it and you want to consider them to have the decency to look out for your best interests everyday, but for me as a mexicano I know I do not answer, that should never be the case, its never been their military, their propoganda, their machine, their punk ass police, their presidents, their politicians, its you that has power, its us that has power, and here, and here a few years ago on that day in March as Bush was taking this country to war for a lie, I stood with you here in San Francisco as you took this whole fucking city over, and I was with you, and right now the whole world is watching us, we can be the greatest generation, we can take facism out of power in the United States and if you don't think thats what it is thats exactly it. We're going to take a lot of sacrifice, a lot of jail time, maybe even a little bit of death, but I'm sure dropping a co-op onto these rich white crackers that don't know shit about the world we know cause rich in this world can go in and have nothing amount to them anymore. Wake up!''

96. Allah, Most High, is the very One Who Himself affirms His Unity by the tongue of whomsoever of His creatures He wishes. If He affirms His Unity in my tongue it is He Who does so, and it is His Affair. Otherwise, my brother, I myself have nothing to do with affirming Allah's Unity.

97. We control fifty percent of a relationship. We influence one hundred percent of it.

98. A revolution is coming - a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough - But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.

99. The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide, and to the extent that we do not violate any known laws of the universe, we can probably make it work the way that we want to.

100. History is at once freedom and necessity.