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.'

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

You don't seem to understand that you don't have the right to put blinders on other people's eyes

In your judgment I have no one else's judgment to use

You're the teacher, you're the master, you know everything, I am your puppet

Children are nothing but tools of their parents

I want you to discover the truth for yourself. I don't ram it down your throats like some do

I don't like making people do things against their will No, sees-in-the-dark. You just refuse to leave them alone until they change their minds. Of their own free will

Stop talking and kiss her, Moses With all due respect, Jethro, that's not for you to decide Stop talking and kiss me Now you, you get a vote

Fais ce que voudras.

It seemed as if she had given these treasures and left him alone - to use them or lose them, apply them or misapply them, according to his own choice. That is all we can do with children, when they grow into big children, old enough to distinguish between right and wrong, and too old to be forced to do either. ~ Ch 7

'I make note that I have never had, nor have wished to have, what is called a boss'

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

Who can give law to lovers? Love is a greater law to itself.

Education in our times must try to find whatever there is in students that might yearn for completion, and to reconstruct the learning that would enable them autonomously to seek that completion.

Je weniger einer, in Folge objektiver oder subjektiver Bedingungen, notig hat, mit den Menschen in Beruhrung zu kommen, desto besser ist er daran.

Every child has an enormous drive to demonstrate competence. If humans are not required to earn a living to be provided survival needs, many are going to want very much to be productive, but not at those tasks they did not choose to do but were forced to accept in order to earn money. Instead, humans will spontaneously take upon themselves those tasks that world society really needs to have done.

I think one of the great, great problems... is confusing people to the point where they become immobile. In fact, the more things people can find out for themselves, the more vigor the organization is going to have.

I am at liberty to vote as my conscience and judgement dictates to be right, without the yoke of any party on me... Look at my arms, you will find no party hand-cuff on them!

You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go.

I'll not listen to reason:Reason always means what someone else has got to say.

Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.

They bring me faith like a closed package in someone else's plate. They want me to accept it so that I don't open it.

That's not my love; that's just your life.

The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is - not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself.

Men who borrow their opinions can never repay their debts.

All my children have spoken for themselves since they first learned to speak, and not always with my advance approval, and I expect that to continue in the future.

How you answer the question, whether individuals should be persuaded to live their whole lives in a state of chemical dependency, first upon contraceptive steroids and then on replacement therapy, depends upon your regard for the autonomy of the individual. If men would not live their lives this way, why should women?

I'm in control of my life, not anyone in Hollywood. I only do this because I'm having fun. The day I stop having fun, I'll just walk away. I wasn't going to have fun doing a teen movie again. I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. I don't. I don't even want to spend the rest of my youth doing this in this industry. There's so much more I want to discover.

Most of the time you don't even know they're there. Now, that's the scary thing. It's really strange and invading, but I'm still working it all out. I try to not let it bother me. And if I want to swim naked in my pool, I'm still going to do it. I certainly don't want to feel that I have to change everything in my life that I do to cater to them. I just won't let it happen.

Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature. It is because of laziness and cowardice that it is so easy for others to usurp the role of guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor!

Morality is thus the relation of actions to the autonomy of the will, that is, to a possible giving of universal law through its maxims. An action that can coexist with the autonomy of the will is permitted; one that does not accord with it is forbidden. A will whose maxims necessarily harmonize with the laws of autonomy is a holy, absolutely good will. The dependence upon the principle of autonomy of a will that is not absolutely good (moral necessitation) is obligation. This, accordingly, cannot be attributed to a holy being. The objective of an action from obligation is called duty.

I'm not going to be joining ZZ Top. You know they can't play my stuff. It's too complicated.

I can never consent to being dictated to.

I don't want to be limited by other people's opinions. (1988)

Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist.

I don't like being told what to do.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Nobody tells me fuck all!

Politics is the art of stopping people from minding their own business.

Freedom means the right to be stupid.

There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point.

I will accept the rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.