Quotes about Self-reliance

A key life skill is the ability to see Beauty where it is and not where you want it to be, where you hoped it would be, or where your parents told you it would be.  The same applies to Love, Truth and Joy.

The function of high school, then, is not so much to communicate knowledge as to oblige children finally to accept the grading system as a measure of their inner excellence. And a function of the self-destructive process in American children is to make them willing to accept not their own, but a variety of other standards, like a grading system, for measuring themselves. It is thus apparent that they way American culture is now integrated it would fall apart if it did not engender feelings of inferiority and worthlessness.

There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.

The difficulties, hardships and trials of life, the obstacles one encounters on the road to fortune are positive blessings. They knit the muscles more firmly, and teach self-reliance. Peril is the element in which power is developed.

It's not a single idea, but many ideas and attitudes, including a reverence for nature and a preference for country life; a desire for maximum personal self-reliance and creative leisure; a concern for family nurture and community cohesion; a certain hostility toward luxury; a belief that the primary reward of work should be well-being rather than money; a certain nostalgia for the supposed simplicities of the past and an anxiety about the technological and bureaucratic complexities of the present and the future; and a taste for the plain and functional.

Bicycling has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammelled womanhood.

HOW TO STAY PROSPEROUS & FREE IN THE 21st CENTURY Americans have always understood that that this nation is unique among nations in the long march of human history, and as we speed into the next century, we seem to be at a crossroads. We are worried that with so many things out of whack; the traditions and institutions that made America great are under attack, standards continue to be lowered, so many minds seem clouded by the fog of liberalism. So let's stay positive; the personal freedoms we still enjoy; the widespread prosperity and bounty unimaginable in any other time and place; the innovations and progress in medicine, technology, communication, science, business, and more; the standard of living never before attained by so many among a nation's citizens...we wonder, will it last? The questions remain. What will ensure that America continues? Can our culture be reclaimed? How can we stay free in the next century? While people of other countries have been restricted m to pursue prosperity, bounded only by the limits of his or her imagination. Besides, only a conservative would ask how we can STAY prosperous and free in the 21st century. A liberal would whine that only a few are prosperous--the evil rich who have somehow gotten rich off the backs of the poor. Liberals don't notice, or understand freedom. They see victims; the oppressed, the downtrodden, and the have-nots. America has had the original ideas of self-government and self-reliance; for which we must thank our Founding Fathers.

This gives force to the strong - that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

The masses have no habit of self reliance or original action.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. . . . The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Self reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.

Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.

Self-reliance can turn a salesman into a merchant; a politician into a statesman; an attorney into a jurist; an unknown youth into a great leader. All are to be tomorrow's big leaders - those who in solitude sit above the clang and dust of time, with the world's secret trembling on their lips.

Humility is the part of wisdom, and is most becoming in men. But let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the rest, the greatest quality of true manliness.

The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's mind. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means the capacity for doing without . . . the average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.

More than ever before, we need to learn and apply the principles of economic self-reliance. We do not know when the crisis involving sickness or unemployment may affect our own circumstances. We do know that the Lord has decreed global calamities for the future and has warned and forewarned us to be prepared. For this reason the Brethren have repeatedly stressed a 'back to basics' program for temporal and spiritual welfare.

The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.

I would not send a poor girl into the world, . . . ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself .