Quotes about Self-reliance

Every little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

He [Calvin Coolidge] is the first president to discover that what the American people want is to be left alone.

I knew a man who, in the age of chain-saws, went right on cutting his wood with a handsaw and an axe. He was a healthier and a saner man than I am. I shall let his memory trouble my thoughts.

He said that when we finally did get the farm paid for we could tell everybody to go to hell. That was what he lived for, to own his farm without having to say please or thank you to a living soul.

She was going about her life, taking her pleasures as she found them, suffering what was hers to suffer, doing what she had to do. She had about her no air of self-pity or complaint. And this could only have been because, in her own heart, she was not pitying herself or complaining.

I can stand on my own feet; I don't need any man's mahogany desk to prop me up

I reckon a man in a tight might let Bill Varner patch him up like a mule, but I be damned if the man that'd let Anse Bundren treat him with raw cement aint got more spare legs than I have.

I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make use and get advantage of her as I can, as is usual in such cases.

I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.

A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.