Self Reliance Quotes

If you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe - to see you, and to give a fuck - you've already blown it.

Neal Stephenson

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.

Napoléon Bonaparte

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everyone will respect you.

Lao Tzu

Standing up for yourself is about more than flinging barbed-wire insults around. Its about picking your battles, knowing when to fight, knowing exactly what and who is worth fighting for.

Paula Stokes

Some humans are made to trust in their supernatural Creator(s) to watch over them, make their lives better, protect them from each other, maybe even save them from themselves and their own actions…Listen, and listen well to that huge silenced inner voice of yours;It should be heard along with all the others. Here is what I heard from mine:“Until proof of the existence of a loving Monotheism-presented God or any supernatural Creator, it is man who will watch over man;We have nobody elseJust usJust each other.

Haroutioun Bochnakian

The profound paradox is that the great man became more confident in his approach to others, including the man of his own Cabinet, but he recognized that his major confidence was not himself but in Another.

Elton Trueblood

What’s the most difficult thing you can do? Live simply. ‘Cause in order to be self-sufficient, you got to get well near everybody else to work for you.

M.C. Humphreys

You can love people, and you can befriend them, but the only person you can ever one hundred percent depend on is yourself.

Trisha Leigh

The hell of it is, I know the answer. The answer is that you never, ever, rely on another person for your peace of mind. If you do, you're screwed but good. Not right away, maybe, but sooner or later. You have to -- I don't know --you have to learn to live with yourself. You have to learn to turn back your own sheets and set a table for one without feeling pathetic. You have to be strong and confident and pleased with yourself and never give the slightest impression that you can't hack it without that certain goddamn someone. You have to fake the hell out of it.

Armistead Maupin

It is only just that anything that grows up on its own should feel it has nothing to repay for an upbringing which it owes no one.

Plato

Furthermore, I preferred to only have cravings I could satisfy without the requirement or assistance of another person. This was, after all, the definition of self-reliance.

Penny Reid

What women are concerned in is developing their own individuality, and hence they refuse to call any man master, be he husband or spiritual guide. Personal freedom is more precious to them than the protection of the best men. The women they envy are not those who are simply wives and mothers, but those who by honest intelligent work have attained distinction in any line of effort, and whose creed has been self-reliance.

Neith Boyce

Powerlessness is such a lure, such a poisonous lure.

Carolyn Ives Gilman

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading. It vexes me to choose another guide.

Charlotte Brontë

I'd rather die my way than live yours.

Lauren Oliver

To find yourself, think for yourself.

Socrates

I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to, and I've made enough money to support myself, and ain't afraid of being alone.

Katharine Hepburn

The proverb warns that, 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.

Thomas Szasz

It was why no sane cat allowed kits to come anywhere near human beings. Humans seemed to feel that it was perfectly acceptable to teach kits to accept food from their hands as a matter of course, rather than teaching them the importance of hunting skill and self-reliance.

Jim Butcher

The time when you should most of all withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

Epicurus

All these men recognized what they themselves valued, and lived according to these values regardless of their relationship to the values of their community. Each lived according to what brought them happiness and peace rather than commonplace prescriptions of the multitudes.

Chris Matakas

Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.

Henry David Thoreau

I seen women take this kind a' help from a man with a look a' relief on their faces. I wondered if these women knew how much easier their lives would be if they did all this stuff for themselves.

Beth Lewis

One thing I learned in life, the only true friend you have in this world is your self.

Auliq-Ice

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The real American ideal of cool which is building businesses, protecting freedom at home and abroad, taking responsibility for your actions, and leaving other people alone to live as they damn well please.

Greg Gutfeld

I don't need him to comfort me or tell me it's okay. I can make it okay, myself.Maybe that was what happened when you faced the very worst thing in the world.She'd lost her family and her old life and maybe even her childhood, but she'd found herself.And that would have to do.

L.J. Smith

He glanced at James before continuing. “If you're going to survive this, the first rule you need to learn is never count on anyone but yourself. Never. People make mistakes, and the zombies are fast. They don't need to sleep or eat anything but us. Don't leave your protection in the hands of someone else.

Rose Wynters

Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society.

Cody Lundin

To know our values is to have a foundation on which to build a great life. Our environment and education will play a large part in influencing our formulation of this world view, but is ultimately ourselves that have the final say. We must decide what we value, and then live accordingly. After all, in the eyes of the world we could achieve great success, but if our actions do not coincide with what we ourselves truly deem worthy, we will find no peace.

Chris Matakas

A life of joy awaits the man who sits alone quietly in a room and determines what he himself believes rather than simply adopting the values of another.

Chris Matakas

Being single is like being an artist, not because creating a functional single life is an art form, but because it requires the same close attention to one's singular needs, as well as the will and focus to fulfill them. Just as the artist arranges her life around her creativity, sacrificing conventional comforts and even social acceptance, sleeping and eating according to her own rhythms, so that her talent thrives above all else, nurtured the way a child might be, so a single person has to think hard to decipher what makes her happiest and most fulfilled.

Kate Bolick

Here must thou be, O man,Strength to thyself — no helper hast thou here —Here keepest thou thy individual state:No other can divide with thee this work,No secondary hand can interveneTo fashion this ability. 'Tis thine,The prime and vital principle is thineIn the recesses of thy nature, farFrom any reach of outward fellowship,Else 'tis not thine at all.

William Wordsworth

Sure, it sucked to be lost, but I'd long ago realized I preferred it to depending on anyone else to get me where I needed to go. That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened- good, bad, or anywhere in between- it was always, if nothing else, all your own.

Sarah Dessen

Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing.

Eve Ensler

DIVINE NECESSITY creates “others” even among family members who become good to be killed by family members…HUMAN NECESSITY commands man to resurrect the supposed reason for which God supposedly shattered humanity in Babylon:The “Covenant” among men.

Haroutioun Bochnakian

We don't permit anyone to tell us our business, nor do we wish to tell anyone his. The same goes for moral outlooks. Don't tread on us and we won't on you. We're a tolerant, liberty-loving bunch, we Wolfes.

James Carlos Blake

A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and, above all, responsible liberty for every individual that we will become that shining city on a hill.

Ronald Reagan

When you take all three categories of temptation to self-reliance – wisdom, might and riches – they form a powerful inducement toward the ultimate form of pride, namely, atheism. The safest way to stay supreme in our own estimation is to deny anything above us. This is why the proud preoccupy themselves with looking down on others. A proud man is always looking down on things and people and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. But to preserve pride it may be simpler to proclaim that there is nothing above to look at (Psalm 10:4). Ultimately, the proud must persuade themselves that there is no God.

John Piper

People keep asking what I do for a living and I keep saying that I don’t believe in making a living. That it’s a concept that has been twisted. I tell them I believe in making a life and money is a distracting object if there’s anything left at the end of the day and I just want to go on well. Make it through the day. So I smile and raise my glass and they laugh and take my hand, saying ”here’s to the youth”, pointing at me. And I might just be youngand naivefor I still believe in the freedom of choiceof how to spend your life.So they toast to the youth, who still think she’s free, and that’s all fine by me.

Charlotte Eriksson

In the history of history, there has never been someone with your particular genetic make-up or life experiences. This being the case, we have no reference points with which to compare ourselves, and therefore it is futile to attempt to measure yourself relative to others.

Chris Matakas

How could I admit that the All-American Girl's force field of stoicism and self-reliance and do-unto-others-and-keep-smiling wasn't working, wasn't keeping pain and shame and powerlessness away? From a young age I had learned to get over - to cover my tracks emotionally, to hide or ignore my problems in the belief that they were mine alone to solve. So when exhilarating transgressions required getting over on authority figures, I knew how to do it. I was a great bluffer. And when common, everyday survival in prison required getting over, I could do that too. This is what was approvingly described by my fellow prisoners as 'street-smarts,' as in 'You wouldn't think it to look at her, but Piper's got street-smarts.

Piper Kerman

Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.You must travel it by yourself.It is not far. It is within reach.Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.

Walt Whitman

The idea of freedom is complex and it is all-encompassing. It’s the idea that the economy must remain free of government persuasion. It’s the idea that the press must operate without government intrusion. And it’s the idea that the emails and phone records of Americans should remain free from government search and seizure. It’s the idea that parents must be the decision makers in regards to their children's education — not some government bureaucrat.But most importantly, it is the idea that the individual must be free to pursue his or her own happiness free from government dependence and free from government control. Because to be truly free is to be reliant on no one other than the author of our destiny. These are the ideas at the core of the Republican Party, and it is why I am a Republican. So my brothers and sisters of the American community, please join with me today in abandoning the government plantation and the Party of disappointment. So that we may all echo the words of one Republican leader who famously said, "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.

Elbert Guillory

The only way to know is to learn, relearn and unlearn.

Lailah Gifty Akita

Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-contained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no colour from the outer world.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

I enjoy working for my heat. I don't just press a button or twist a thermostat dial. I use the big crosscut saw and the axe, and while I'm getting my heat supply I'm working up an appetite that makes simple food just as appealing as anything a French chef could create.

Richard Proenneke

I don't confuse my digestive system, I just season simple food with hunger

Richard Proenneke

She was looking for something I could never give her." Again his dark eyes bored into Julia's mind. "You have something of the same about you, young woman. Take my advice: Don't think you will find it in another person. You won't. It's not there. You must find it in yourself.

Iain Pears

The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

True respect comes when we fend for ourselves without the aid of anyone, and when we owned something and say, 'this is my own'! Not necessarily as a way of boasting of our abundance and grace, but having a feeling that we can use it without obstruction, or being asked to return the favor.

Michael Bassey Johnson

Keep your problems to yourself, if its too much for you, kill it slowly till it disappears from your life.

Michael Bassey Johnson

Confidence, is like a belt worn around the waist. Wear it too tight, you come off cocky and arrogant, wear it too loose, you come off timid and a walk over, but wear it fit and snug, it will uphold you in every step of the way.

Anthony Liccione

When you bury your head in the sand you leave your backside exposed to those who seek to take advantage.

Gary Hopkins

In yourself right now is all the place you've got.

Flannery O'Connor

For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose.

Marcus Aurelius

You can only depend on one person and that is you.

Debasish Mridha

You must love and respect yourself enough to never be a victim under any circumstance.

Gary Hopkins

Live a life that you do not need to take a vacation from. Live in a way that makes yearly resolutions unnecessary. Make the kind of choices that leave you Happy and Healthy... where all of your needs are satisfied. Live a life where your only ‘wants’ are for others to feel as good as you do.

Gary Hopkins

Conquer no man but thyself.

Lailah Gifty Akita

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Self Reliance Quotes

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