Quotes about Self-reliance

Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath.

We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a hope. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening. To use our own voice. To see our own light. —Hildegard of Bingen

When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his wants are, after all!

We say we believe in God, trust in God, and are sustained by God; but in our actions we do everything for ourselves, trusting in ourselves and anxious about the providence of God, which unravels our theism.

Too often we believe like theists (a personal God) and act like deists (a distant, impersonal, noninteractive, uninvolved god). We say we believe in God, trust in God, and are sustained by God; but in our actions we do everything for ourselves, trusting in ourselves and anxious about the providence of God,

If our parents fixed everything for us and did not allow us to do anything on our own, or intervened every single time, we would all grow up to be completely dependent.

It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified.

If the government can't get the black man justice, then it's time for the black man to get some justice for himself.

Union is only possible to those who are units. To be fit for relations in time, souls, whether of man or woman, must be able to do without them in the spirit.

Don't go around thinking the world owes you a living. It was here first.

The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Never learn to do anything: if you don't learn, you'll always find someone else to do it for you.