Quotes about Independence

I could die for you. But I couldn't and wouldn't live for you.

I do not care to be admired by anyone's heart—only by someone's head.

They kept their secret from the knowledge of others, not as a shameful guilt, but as a thing that was immaculately theirs, beyond anyone's right of debate or appraisal.

Self-sacrifice, we drool, is a virtue. Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honor? His freedom? His ideal? His convictions? The honesty of his feeling? The independence of his thoughts? But these are a man's supreme possessions. Anything he gives up for them is not a sacrifice but an easy bargain.

When Helen's father compliments Annie on the fact that she has taught Helen the rudiments of discipline, Annie, discouraged, answers: ". . . to do nothing but obey is—no gift, obedience without understanding is a—blindness, too.

What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree, and to obey?

She caught herself thinking: She's functioning well in an emergency, I'll be all right with her—and realized that she was thinking of herself.

Why, child, such things are to be decided only by you and my son.

There are only individual minds and individual achievements—and a culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiated masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.

I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need. "I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others.

Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority.

Thinking is something one doesn't borrow or pawn.