181 Autonomy Quotes

No human being, even the most passionately loved and passionately loving, is ever in our possession.

Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

My life is about my journey, and your life is about your journey. You are completely unqualified to draw my map, and I am completely unqualified to draw yours. I hope you'll let me know all about the path you've found, so that I may judge it for myself against my own path, and have the freedom to choose between the two. But please don't try and drag me from my path on to yours, and I will be sure to return the favor.

Though the Negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, the bare name of freemen-the lordship over his own person, the power to choose and will-are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter; possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their fullest enjoyment without them.

Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy.

Man is free; but not unless he believes he is[.]

No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.

Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

She made the decision that her existence had lost its meaning. And you cannot judge that.

If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don't have to manage them.

That's one thing that's always, like, been a difference between, like, the performing arts, and being a painter, you know. A painter does a painting, and he paints it, and that's it, you know. He has the joy of creating it, it hangs on a wall, and somebody buys it, and maybe somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere until he dies. But he never, you know, nobody ever, nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint a Starry Night again, man!' You know? He painted it and that was it.

The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody. Thank you for using me, even though I didn't want to be used by anybody.

People are not here to meet your expectations.

Do not let either the medical authorities or the politicians mislead you. Find out what the facts are, and make your own decisions about how to live a happy life and how to work for a better world.

You have to be careful who you let define your good.

As of today, I have absolutely no regrets. I think I am a mature person who can take things in stride. I'm grateful for people in my past. They helped me get to where I am, wherever that is. But now, I am thinking for myself and sitting in on all the business transactions.

There's a line in the picture where he snarls, 'Nobody tells me what to do.' That's exactly how I've felt all my life.

I am not going to be dictated to by fans, certainly. I am dictated enough to by my record company to last me a million years.

Human beings will find a balanced situation when they do good things not because God says it, but because they feel like doing them.

The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed.

All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.

To find yourself, think for yourself.

Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it. And the only possible way to accomplish this great change is to accord to women equal power in the making, shaping and controlling of the circumstances of life.

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Success is doing what you want to do, when you want, where you want, with whom you want, as much as you want.

'Several of my critics have said: 'Bowerman just tacks up a piece of paper in the locker room and turns his runners loose.' They're partially right. I do give the athletes a relatively free rein and for good reason. One of my principles is: Don't overcoach.''

A self-willed man obeys a different law, the one law I, too, hold absolutely sacred - the human law in himself, his own individual will.

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.

When it came to formal classes, I was a slacker. But I've always been a diligent autodidact and can teach myself virtually any subject - if I have a serious interest in it.

I don't give advice. I can't tell anybody what to do. Instead I say this is what we know about this problem at this time. And here are the consequences of these actions.

'Either you think - or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.'

The patient decides when it's best to go [die].

You don't love him, you don't know how to love people. You only know how to own them. And because people will never act just like you want them too... You'll always feel betrayed. And because everybody dies, you'll always feel cheated. But you're the cheat... You're the one who uses our love for you to try to control us.

I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator - that's beyond my conceit. I therefore have no choice but to find something suspect even in the humblest believer. Even the most humane and compassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville's unforgettable line, 'Created sick - Commanded to be well.' And there are totalitarian insinuations to back this up if its appeal should fail. Christians, for example, declare me redeemed by a human sacrifice that occurred thousands of years before I was born. I didn't ask for it, and would willingly have foregone it, but there it is: I'm claimed and saved whether I wish it or not. And if I refuse the unsolicited gift? Well, there are still some vague mutterings about an eternity of torment for my ingratitude. That is somewhat worse than a Big Brother state, because there could be no hope of its eventually passing away. In any case, I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context [Exodus 21]). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and 'nonjudgmental' that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion. Judaism has some advantages over Christianity in that, for example, it does not proselytise - except among Jews - and it does not make the cretinous mistake of saying that the Messiah has already made his appearance. However, along with Islam and Christianity, it does insist that some turgid and contradictory and sometimes evil and mad texts, obviously written by fairly unexceptional humans, are in fact the word of god. I think that the indispensable condition of any intellectual liberty is the realisation that there is no such thing.

To live sanely in Los Angeles (or, I suppose, in any other large American city) you have to cultivate the art of staying awake. You must learn to resist (firmly but not tensely) the unceasing hypnotic suggestions of the radio, the billboards, the movies and the newspapers; those demon voices which are forever whispering in your ear what you should desire, what you should fear, what you should wear and eat and drink and enjoy, what you should think and do and be. They have planned a life for you - from the cradle to the grave and beyond - which it would be easy, fatally easy, to accept. The least wandering of the attention, the least relaxation of your awareness, and already the eyelids begin to droop, the eyes grow vacant, the body starts to move in obedience to the hypnotist's command. Wake up, wake up - before you sign that seven-year contract, buy that house you don't really want, marry that girl you secretly despise. Don't reach for the whisky, that won't help you. You've got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgment. And you must do this, I repeat, without tension, quite rationally and calmly. For if you give way to fury against the hypnotists, if you smash the radio and tear the newspapers to shreds, you will only rush to the other extreme and fossilize into defiant eccentricity.

A fateful process is set in motion when the individual is released 'to the freedom of his own impotence' and left to justify his existence by his own efforts. The autonomous individual, striving to realize himself and prove his worth, has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science and technology. The autonomous individual, also, when he can neither realize himself nor justify his existence by his own efforts, is a breeding call of frustration, and the seed of the convulsions which shake our world to its foundations. The individual on his own is stable only so long as he is possessed of self-esteem. The maintenance of self-esteem is a continuous task which taxes all of the individual's powers and inner resources. We have to prove our worth and justify our existence anew each day. When, for whatever reason, self-esteem is unattainable, the autonomous individual becomes a highly explosive entity. He turns away from an unpromising self and plunges into the pursuit of pride - the explosive substitute for self-esteem. All social disturbances and upheavals have their roots in crises of individual self-esteem, and the great endeavor in which the masses most readily unite is basically a search for pride.

You can lead a boy to college, but you can't make him think.

If I married him, I would not dare to call my soul my own, Which so he had bought and paid for: every thought And every heart-beat down there in the bill,- Not one found honestly deductible From any use that pleased him!

The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within.

Be not the slave of Words.

I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's; I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create.

If a man is not bound down, he is sure to succeed.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Of me you shall not win renown: You thought to break a country heart For pastime, ere you went to town. At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired; The daughter of a hundred earls, You are not one to be desired.

Music's pretty cool and I'm glad to be a part of it. Sometimes when you reach for the stars, you end up in the fucking shit. I don't believe in God. I don't believe in America. I don't believe in rock-and-roll. I believe in me.

I don't need them to correct anything for me, even with the help of computers. Of course the book has mistakes, but I can correct them myself. They changed my things on purpose. (on changes made to the new edition of My 60 Memorable Games)

Schenck was supposed to be my producer but he never knew when or what I was shooting. He just turned me loose.

I don't ask other men's opinions. I have my own.

I'm not gonna tell people what they should and shouldn't take...unless they get too high and step on my toes - then I'll punch them in the face and they'll learn that way.

The key word for me on him is 'inspiration.' He is a leader by inspiration. He sets an example. It's quite important that people realize that I don't see him as a glad-handing show-off, a one-man vigilante force who rights every wrong. Basically, he's a pacifist, a man who comes along and says, 'What can I do to help?' He stands on the sidelines until there is real trouble. He does not want to get involved unless it's absolutely necessary because he thinks people should learn to make their own decisions.

I'm a junkyard full of false starts And I don't need your permission To bury my love under this bare light bulb. The moon is a sickle cell It'll kill you in time.

Refuse altogether to take an oath if you can, if not, as far as may be. (166)

I do not know Tyrone Power. I fucked him a lot, but I do not know him. Gentlemen, this meeting is over: I don't care to sell your goddamned orange juice.

Here we can only direct and create conditions, but not help.

You must not allow your reading to dominate you but you should dominate your reading.

The state can do what they want to do. Don't try to trap me in this state's issue like you're trying to get me into.

I can only speak to myself.

Propaganda is not French, it is not civilized to want other people to believe what you believe because the essence of being civilised is to possess yourself as you are, and if you possess yourself as you are you of course cannot possess any one else, it is not your business. (New York: Liveright, 1970, p. 56)

Helmer: First and foremost, you are a wife and mother. Nora: That I don't believe any more. I believe that first and foremost I am an individual, just as you are.

Un homme sans passion et sans argent reste maitre de sa personne; mais un malheureux qui aime ne s'appartient plus et ne peut pas se tuer. L'amour nous donne une sorte de religion pour nous-memes, nous respectons en nous une autre vie; il devient alors le plus horrible des malheurs.

It will probably be conceded that it is desirable people should exercise their understandings, and that an intelligent following of custom, or even occasionally an intelligent deviation from custom, is better than a blind and simply mechanical adhesion to it. (pp. 73-74)

No. I'm not going to be your monkey.

There's been a tremendous amount of growth. An actress is not expected to continue to play her ingenue roles, you know, I've written myself roles to grow into gracefully, but there is no growing into gracefully in the pop world. Basically the reason I'm so unruly in this business is because I never wanted to be a human jukebox.

He is wealthy enough, that wanteth not: he is great enough, that is his own master: he is happy enough, that lives to die well.

[Freedom of speech] isn't something somebody else gives you. That's something you give to yourself.

I have denied my eyes, both inner and outer. I am not a child, or virgin, or modest wife, fearing to offend. No one owns my eyes now but me. If I have not the stomach by now to look upon any sight in the world, good or evil, beautiful or vile, when shall I? It is far too late for innocence. My only hope is the much more painful consolation of wisdom. Which can grow out of knowledge alone. Give me my true eyes. I want to see. I have to know.

While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess.

Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of the truth.

Why is it I can't do whatever I want to? Went into my personal life and I don't live it for you So don't you try to tell me what is right for me You be concerned about you I can do what I want to. ~Xscape (leaked song)

The free human society may arise at last, no longer organised ... from the top down... but rather starting from the free individual and the free association and autonomous commune, from the bottom up.

'Who said to me, a foetus in the womb, a puling babe, 'You have your life, but on the condition that you thus believe?' No one! Not even God! So gentlemen, I say you have no right to make terms for my life. I tell you then- No! I will not recant.'

How can you reach the womb of the Abyss to make it fruitful? This cannot be expressed, cannot be narrowed into words, cannot be subjected to laws; every man is completely free and has his own special liberation. No form of instruction exists, no Savior exists to open up the road. No road exists to be opened.

How could he not know that children had minds of their own, and resisted taming?

You don't know that you're right. And you don't know that I'm wrong. It's my life. The hell it is.

Part of you but also not-you. Other. Outside but inside. Bound to you but free. It couldn't control you and you couldn't control it.

You'd think she'd learn something from that. But she still does the same thing. Making decisions that deform other people's lives, without consulting them, without ever conceiving that perhaps they don't want her to save them from whatever supposed misery she's saving them from.

They've never seen us make a move like that. They don't understand that, yes, humans will always act to preserve their own lives - except for the times when they don't. In the bugger's experience, autonomous beings do not sacrifice themselves. Once they understood our autonomy, the seed of their defeat was sown.

Maybe she just wanted to be the one to decide when things happened between them. Then again, what women didn't want to decide that?

They gave me powers of thought and memory far beyond anything natural evolution would have given me, but that doesn't give them the right to decide the meaning of my life as if I were some dream. I decide the meaning. If my life is a dream then it's my dream, I'm the dreamer.

It's the only way to save your life Did you ever ask me if I wanted my life to be saved?

'Babelogue': He spared the child and spoiled the rod I have not sold myself to God!

A lot of people don't get to tell me. They always say I know you're going to do what you want to do, but I'm telling you what my concerns are.

I run best when I run free.

'The only decent marriage would be one allowing each partner to lead an independent life, in which, instead of a fusion derived from an enforced community of economic interest, both freely accepted mutual responsibility.'

'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.'

The Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book.

It's good to be king and have your own way, get a feeling of peace at the end of the day.

Do what you like. This is what I like and that's what I'm doing.

'They say jump and you say how high, ya brain dead, you gotta fucking bullet in ya head!!!'

'Fuck you I won't do what you tell me!'

'I am no man's property!'

Stop pressuring me ~ Scream