Quotes about Independence

Pity those who seek for shepherds, instead of longing for freedom!

Offspring

I tried to tell her:
    This way the twig is bent.
    Born of my trunk and strengthened by my roots,
    You must stretch newgrown branches
    Closer to the sun
    Than I can reach.

I wanted to say:
    Extend my self to that far atmosphere
    Only my dreams allow.

But the twig broke,
And yesterday I saw her
Walking down an unfamiliar street,
    Feet confident
    Face slanted upward toward a threatening sky,
And
    She was smiling
    And she was
    Her very free,
    Her very individual,
    Unpliable
    Own

'You're not like other children,' said my mother. 'And if you can't survive in this world, you had better make a world of your own.'
The eccentricities she described as mine were really her own. She was the one who hated going out. She was the one who couldn't live in the world she had been given. She longed for me to be free, and did everything she could to make sure it never happened.

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities.  I am truly a "lone traveler" and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude - feelings which increase with the years.

The finest inheritance you can give to a child is to allow it to make its own way, completely on its own feet.

The best people, like the best wines, come from the hills.

It is one thing to remember, another to know.  To remember is to safeguard something entrusted to the memory.  But to know is to make each thing one's own, not depend on the text and always to look back to the teacher.  "Zeno said this, Cleanthes said this."  Let there be space between you and the book.

I couldn't drive you insane, you were behind the wheel the whole time. In your life, I ride shotgun.

When there is a storm in your life, it is not the time to build. No creature on earth tries to build during a storm. Conserve your energy until the storm passes.    

The dance floor of life is filled with joy for everyone except for those who forget that it is better to dance by yourself than to dance with a partner who always criticizes your step.    

You would not go into an apple orchard and eat the weeds so why would you go into your day and feast on worries?

"You will do as you're told, and that's the end." 

She thought about that for a split second, answered calmly, "No.  I won't.  What will you do?"

You're getting like an attitude.  What you get put through for just wanting something more out of life.  Makes you vulnerable.  Inside, that tug of desperation, trying not to be excited, maybe this is it, and it's usually freaks and you want to shout I'm not like you.

Human beings "belong" to some minor comity or enclave of faith at the expense of the clarity and autarkia of their intelligence and conscience, of course.  "Belonging" is another way of saying:  "capitulating to."

If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.

“With these hands a life will spring-whose limbs will stretch to the limitless sky, whose leaves will grace the vastness of the universe”

After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn that love doesn't mean security
and you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises

you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes open, with
the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child
and you learn to build your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight

after a while you learn that even sunshine burns
if you get too much
so, you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone else to bring you flowers
and you learn you really can endure
that you really are strong
you really do have worth
and you learn and you learn
with every good-bye you learn.

Take note, ye honestly ambitious: we sing happily the praises of the righteous honest in our religious texts, but don't think we really believe that kind of "goodness" pays. The muses of the merry, happy "gooder" ones who rule us, George Washington, Abe Lincoln and Patrick Hamilton harmonize the tune we know speaks true truth. Liberty, freedom and independence are to be found by keeping the notes they grace us with -- the one, five and ten dollar bills -- close by the side. Disregard their song at your own pecuniary peril.

Man! The most complex of creatures, and for this reason the most dependant of creatures. On everything that has formed you, you may depend. Do not balk at this apparent slavery….a debtor to many, you pay for your advantages by the same number of dependencies. Understand that independence is a form of poverty; that many things claim you, that many also claim kinship with you.

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. 

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. 

You, the sons and daughters, the future of Turkiye, even under such circumstances and conditions, your duty is to save the Turkish independence and the Republic, you will find the power you need in the noble blood in your veins.

The proper posture for the creature is one of receptivity. In Perelandra we see several ways in which this posture could be corrupted or destroyed. First it is always possible to seek ways to assure ourselves of repeating the pleasure. This is what makes money so suspect in Lewis' eyes - it is a means by which we assure ourselves that we can have the pleasure whenever we want it. It provides a measure of independence. One no longer has to throw oneself into the wave. Second, even when one pleasure is given, it is (as the Lady discovered) possible to turn from what is given to something which is (thought to be) preferred. And this, in turn, is what makes a life oriented toward the future suspect for Lewis - to commit too much of one's hopes and happiness to the future will make impossible the posture of receptivity appropriate to a creature.

In either case-whether we try to secure means for repeating the pleasure at will or turn from what is given to something else which is desired - Lewis thinks that we will eventually lose the capacity for delighting in what is received. For to treat a created thing as something more than that is to destroy its true character. To seek in any created thing a complete fulfillment of the longing which moves us is to make of it an object of infinite desire and, because it is only a created thing, a false infinite. It may still be sweet, at least for a time, because it is intended by its Giver to be a source of delight. But in the end it will be poison for the person who gives his heart only to it. Hence the constant temptation: the lure of the sweet poison of the false infinite.

A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether.
And alone and without its nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.

Independence is important to intelligent decision making for two reasons. First, it keeps the mistakes that people make from becoming correlated. Errors in individual judgement won't wreck the group's collective judgement as long as those errors aren't systematically pointing in the same direction. One of the quickest ways to make people's judgements systematically biased is to make them dependent on each other for information. Second, independent individuals are more likely to have a new information rather than the same old data everyone is already familiar with. The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence doesn't imply rationality or impartiality though. You can be biased and irrational, but as long as you're independent, you won't make the group any dumber.

Bubbles and crashes are textbook examples of collective decision making gone wrong. In a bubble, all of the conditions that make groups intelligent -- independence, diversity, private judgement--disappear.

The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence doesn't imply rationality or impartiality, though. You can be biased and irrational, but as long as you're independent, you won't make the group any dumber.

Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

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.

Self-actualized people are independent of the good opinion of others.

Interdependency follows independence.