Quotes about Autonomy
It is for men to choose whether they will govern themselves or be governed.
- Henry Ward Beecher
My faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me.
- Abraham Lincoln
To be a man is to be a nonconformist.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
- Henry David Thoreau
It is a maxim that no man was ever enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free.
- Samuel Johnson
I do not believe there ever was a man who was his own master, but that every man has a master of some kind or other.
- Charles Spurgeon
There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men.
- Ayn Rand
Man is not fully free unless he is master of himself.
- Epictetus
There is nothing that gives a man consequence, and renders him fit for command, like a support that renders him independent of everybody but the State he serves.
- George Washington
The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
- Theodore Roosevelt
You must do it alone.
- Theodore Roosevelt
The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.
- St. Thomas Aquinas