Quotes about Autonomy

If they make the choice to walk over me rather than walk with me, I'll have to love them from afar.

My ability to heal cannot depend on anyone's choices but my own.

The…destructive…message is that the parents don't trust their children to do what they are supposed to do whether it be learning to fall asleep on their own, figuring out how to safely climb a tree, or remembering to do the homework assignment. This message is especially harmful. Children cannot believe in themselves if the most important people in their lives don't believe in them.

I acknowledge that I can control only myself. I can't control how another person acts or reacts.

Child," said the Voice, "I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.

We often speak of a man who's done this successfully as a "self-made man." The appellation is usually spoken with a sense of admiration, but really it should be said in the same tones we might use of the dearly departed, or of a man who recently lost an arm—with sadness and regret. What the term really means is "an orphaned man who figured how to master some part of life on his own.

The most powerful single force in the world today is neither Communism nor Capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile -- it is man's eternal desire to be free and independent.

Trying to please everybody is impossible - if you did that, you'd end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You've just got to make the decision about what you think is your best, and do it.

I still say the only education worth anything is self-education.

Whatever may be, I am still largely the creator and ruler of my emotional destiny.

Maturation is the development from environmental support to self-support.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.