All Quotes By Tag: Self-determination

“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)”

“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?”

“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 catastrophic, that you have no choice but to be liberated by it. That’s the only choice, or else you crawl into a corner and die.”

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

“You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!”

“Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it’s not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit, full of books and films you’ve been to. I’m not afraid of being homesick and having no language to live in. I don’t have to be like anyone else. I’m walking on the wall and nobody can stop me.”

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

“You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.” (Elizabeth Bennett)”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”)”

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

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