Quotes about Autonomy

Step on my toe. Must I curse? I may. Must I forgive you? I may. Must I yell? I may. Must I smile? I may. What I do will reflect my character, but it is "I" who will act and not just react like a bell ringing when a button is pushed.

A person doesn't demonstrate independence by rebelling. You do it by shouldering responsibilities, making wise, thoughtful decisions.

When you treat people like children, you get children's work. Yet that's exactly how a lot of companies and managers treat their employees.

To successfully work with other people, you have to trust each other. A big part of this is trusting people to get their work done wherever they are, without supervision."‡

If you still want people in the office every day, change that requirement to every afternoon instead. Then let your troops have their mornings to themselves.

Ironically, you'll probably get far more done when only half of your workday overlaps with the rest of your team. Instead of spending the entire day dealing with Urgent!!! emails and disruptive phone calls, you'll have the entire start (or end) of the day to yourself.

When you treat people like children, you get children's work. Yet that's exactly how a lot of companies and managers treat their employees. Employees need to ask permission before they can do anything. They need to get approval for every tiny expenditure.

Embracing remote work doesn't mean you can't have an office, just

With a small team, you need people who are going to do work, not delegate work. Everyone's got to be producing. No one can be above the work.

Original! We're all as like each other as those dolls cut out of the same folded paper. We're like patterns stenciled on a wall. Can't you and I strike out for ourselves, May?

It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will . . . than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of a political benevolence.

We crave autonomy. Autonomy is closely linked to arrogance. They are both expressions of human pride, but autonomy suggests that we want to be separate from more than over. We want to establish the rules rather than submit to the lordship of the living God. This was the essence of Adam's original sin. We want to interpret the world according to our system of thought. We want to establish our own parallel universe, separate from God's.