Independence Quotes

Marry me, Lada. It is the perfect solution. Lada laughed. Mehmed's smile grew, until he realized her laugh was not a sweet breeze of delight, but a brutal desert wind carrying stinging sand in its wake. I will never marry.

~ Kiersten White

True autonomy is preceded by the experience of being dependent. True liberation can be found only beyond the deep ambivalence of infantile dependence.

~ Alice Miller

Sharif Miyan: I wish I did, though. Own some land, that is. My family owned it once when I was a young man. It's all gone now. Sharif Miyan's eyes had a faraway look in them, as if he could still see the land.Avi: Where did it go?Sharif Miyan: We lost it during Partition. My family owned many farms in Punjab---the one in Pakistan.Avi: But land does not go anywhere, does it?Sharif Miyan: You are right. Land does not. It's not the people who go away. I know where my land is in Punjab. I can see it. I can walk on it. But it is not mine. Isn't that terrible? I can never forget the day when those landgrabbers held my family at gunpoint and told me to leave. I didn't think I would have to leave the country.

~ Rohit Gore

…But so few of us think clearly about our own private incomes, and admit that independent thoughts are in nine cases out of ten the result of independent means.

~ E.m. Forster

It is not difficult to stand above the conventions when we leave no hostages among them; men can always be more unconventional than women, and a bachelor of independent means need encounter no difficulties at all.

~ E.m. Forster

Elinor retreated to the terrace where the night air on her skin felt like a hot bath. She was hurt, it had been such an onslaught. All the things she'd achieved in the past four years, the independent life she'd built for herself, seemed to count for nothing here. The only thing that mattered to her mother was finding a husband. As for painting, well, nice little hobby, very suitable, but you won't have much time for that when the children arrive.

~ Pat Barker

I guess I've found that I'd rather be alone than with the wrong person.

~ Kristan Higgins

Our reverence for independence takes no account of the reality of what happens in life: sooner or later, independence will become impossible. Serious illness or infirmity will strike. It is as inevitable as sunset. And then a new question arises: If independence is what we live for, what do we do when it can no longer be sustained?

~ Atul Gawande

Kurdistan has a long and turbulent history. Today, it faces a future branching in directions that could lead it towards success or disaster, freedom or renewed oppression.

~ Davan Yahya Khalil

Thinking for yourself and making your own decisions can be frightening. Letting go of other people’s expectations can leave you feeling empty for a time. And yet seeing yourself as an independent adult who can stand up for your own choices frees you to accept yourself as you are.

~ Ellen Bass

Believing in your standards for a square deal, even when there's no way to get it, is what allows you to create boundaries and take independent action.

~ Michael I. Bennett

There is no such thing as an “independent artist”. All artists are essentially co-dependent of the audience.

~ Natasha Tsakos

We Kurd must do everything in our power to create structures which prevent the repeat of mass murder by our adversaries,And It’s better to call for independence.

~ Davan Yahya Khalil

The history of Kurdistan doesn’t just tell us why it hasn’t become independent so far. It also helps to make the case for Kurdistan’s independence. It is a desire founded, not just on some passing modern whim in that direction, or on spurious claims to natural and obvious borders, but on a sustained historical focus and desire by its people, on pre-existing promises, on the need for protection from the kind of atrocities that have historically been perpetrated against the Kurds, and on the rather artificial way in which Kurdistan has been denied its existence in the past.

~ Davan Yahya Khalil

Creator of indifferences” is the motto I want for my spirit today. I'd like my life's activity to consist, above all, in educating others to feel more and more for themselves, and less and less according to the dynamic low of collectiveness. To educate people in that spiritual antisepsis which precludes contamination by commonness and vulgarity is the loftiest destiny I can imagine for the pedagogue of inner discipline that I aspire to be. If all who read me would learn – slowly, of course, as the subject matter requires – to be completely insensitive to the other people's opinions and even their glances, that would be enough of a garland to make up for my life's scholastic stagnation.

~ Pessoa

I'll play your fucking game. But I don't have to play by your rules.

~ Christina Baker Kline

Powerlessness is such a lure, such a poisonous lure.

~ Carolyn Ives Gilman

The only guide which I feel that I can follow is not the fluctuating dicta of those who are victors in the battle for popularity at a given moment, but my own understanding of the American tradition in which I was brought up.

~ Jane Jacobs

I will always aspire to contain my shit as best I can, but I am no longer interested in hiding my dependencies in an effort to appear superior to those who are more visibly undone or aching.

~ Maggie Nelson

In the individual who is characterized by independence without corresponding relatedness, there will develop hostility toward those whom he believes to be the occasion of his isolation. In the individual who is symbiotically dependent there will develop hostility toward those whom he regards as instrumental in the suppression of his capacities and freedom.

~ Rollo May

Life is about love and as a country that stands united, we lose in the battle that we call love.

~ Jonathan Anthony Burkett

The notion that I had walked twelve hundred miles since Rotterdam filled me with a legitimate feeling of something achieved. But why should the thought that nobody knew where I was, as though I were in flight from bloodhounds or from worshipping corybants bent on dismemberment, generate such a feeling of triumph? It always did.

~ Patrick Leigh Fermor

Helplessness didn't have to be my identity, I wasn't condemned to it. I was willing - able - to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed [my mom] to help me, to take care of things for me - and to save me - but, back in the home where I'd learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it.

~ Aspen Matis

Since 1857 we know what we are capable of,And Since 1947 we know what is at Stake.

~ Mishra Ankit

... rarely missed her family - her family had created their own realm of problems - but at times like this, having someone to turn to would have made life easier.

~ Gail Gaymer Martin

Disrobe both conformity and rebellion to find true independence.

~ Khang Kijarro Nguyen

I know about how you need to be left alone to do work. I know why. This job, you'll be allowed to do that. You'll report to me, but when you're here, you'll be working on tasks that I assign and that you'll be able to do by yourself.

~ Craig Lancaster

I help those who can help themselves.

~ Agatha Christie

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

There's a line in the picture where he (Johnny - The Wild One) snarls, 'Nobody tells me what to do.' That's exactly how I've felt all my life.

~ Marlon Brando

Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women do when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.

~ Thomas Hardy

With so much Moos from the herd, how you gon' get heard?

~ Chinonye J. Chidolue

Keep your eyes open. Look at the world without prejudice, pay attention to your sources, and decide for yourself where the truth lies. That is the greatness of the path I'm offering you.

~ Javier Sierra

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.... It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you have never questioned set boundaries, or experienced conflict with your family members, you may not have an adult-to-adult connection with your family. If you have no other “best friends” than your family, you need to take a close look at those relationships. You may be afraid of becoming an autonomous adult.

~ Henry Cloud

Notice how they’ll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once...There’s a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They’ve got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them—because they don’t exist within him and that’s the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man.

~ Ayn Rand

I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. Freedom, Alvah, freedom.”“You call that freedom?”“To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.

~ Ayn Rand

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

I consider my time too valuable to be spent in cultivating acquaintance with a person from whom neither pleasure nor improvement are to be expected.

~ Hanna Webster Foster