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Self-Reliance Quotes and Quotations
 It is better to be tied to any thorny bush than to be with a cross man.  I don't follow precedent, I establish it. Your future depends on many things, but mostly on you. The woman who can create her own job is the one who will win fame and fortune. Don't ask of your friends what you yourself can do. The thing women have got to learn is that nobody gives you power. You just take it. Who ever walked behind anyone to freedom? A man who finds no satisfaction in himself, seeks for it in vain elsewhere. The wise don't expect to find life worth living; they make it that way. I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves. I am learning that if I just go on accepting the framework for life that others have given me, if I fail to make my own choices, the reason for my life will be missing. I will be unable to recognize that which I have the power to change. To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. Real adulthood is the result of two qualities: self-discipline and self-reliance. The process of developing them together in balance is called maturing. He who would be well taken care of must take care of himself. What we say and what we do ultimately comes back to us so let us own our responsibility, place it in our hands, and carry it with dignity and strength. We are free up to the point of choice, then the choice controls the chooser. To be born free is an accident; to live free a responsibility; to die free is an obligation. The best bet is to bet on yourself. It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself. Do for yourself or do without. Intimate relationships cannot substitute for a life plan, but to have any meaning or viability at all, a life plan must include intimate relationships. The great law of denial belongs to the powerful forces of life, whether the case be one of coolish baked beans, or an unrequited affection. For the great benefits of our being- our life, health, and reason-we look upon ourselves. I have always regarded myself as the pillar of my life. A secure individual... knows that the responsibility for anything concerning his life remains with himself-and he accepts that responsibility. An axe at home saves hiring a carpenter. We're all in this together ... alone. No one can really pull you up very high-you lose your grip on the rope. But on your own two feet you can climb mountains. We need to find the courage to say no to the things and people that are not serving us if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity. No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change. Women share with men the need for personal success, even the taste for power, and no longer are we willing to satisfy those needs through the achievements of surrogates, whether husbands, children, or merely role models. There is no dependence that can be sure but a dependence upon one's self. - John Gay Getting fit is a political act-you are taking charge of your life. It is easier to live life through someone else than to become complete yourself. Being black does not stop you. You can sit out in the world and say, "Well, white people kept me back, and I can't do this." Not so. You can have anything you want if you make up your mind and you want it. The future is not in the hands of fate, but in ours. Men are made stronger on realization that the helping hand they need is at the end of their own arm. I never really address myself to any image anybody has of me. That's like fighting with ghosts. There is no such thing as vicarious experience. I love being single. It's almost like being rich. The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm. Every tub must stand on its own bottom. You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was. Do not rely completely on any other human being, however dear. We meet all of life's greatest tests alone. Only those means of security are good, are certain, are lasting, that depend on yourself and your own vigor. I don't want to be a passenger in my own life. Independence is happiness. Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself. Every man paddles his own canoe. If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself. If you want a thing done, go; if not, send. I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie. If it is to be, it is up to me. There are three types of baseball players-those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happened. Rogers sees daylight. Campbell makes daylight. I leave before being left. I decide. No man may make another free. The best things in life must come by effort from within, not by gifts from the outside. Living by proxy is always a precarious expedient. When I saw something that needed doing, I did it. The only discipline that lasts is self-discipline. The destiny of man is in his own soul. My future is one I must make myself. Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. If there is no wind, row. No bird soars too high if he soars on his own wings. Seek not good from without: seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it. We carry with us the wonders we seek without us. As far as beauty is concerned, in order to be confident we must accept that the way we look and feel is our own responsibility. Ruin and recovery are both from within. Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose. People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within. If you can't change your fate, change your attitude. - Amy Tan He who is plenteously provided for from within needs but little from without. What pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies ... the real man. The foundations which we would dig about and find are within us, like the Kingdom of Heaven, rather than without. No external advantages can supply self-reliance. The force of one's being ... must come from within. Every time I start a picture ... I feel the same fear, the same self-doubts ... and I have only one source on which I can draw, because it comes from within me. There is no man so low down that the cure for his condition does not lie strictly within himself. It is what you are inside that matters. You, yourself, are your only real capital. Look well into thyself; there is a source which will always spring up if thou wilt always search there. I've never met a person, I don't care what his condition, in whom I could not see possibilities. I don't care how much a man may consider himself a failure, I believe in him, for he can change the thing that is wrong in his life anytime he is prepared and ready to do it. Whenever he develops the desire, he can take away from his life the thing that is defeating it. The capacity for reformation and change lies within. You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you. God, why do I storm heaven for answers that are already in my heart? Every grace I need has already been given me. Oh, lead me to the Beyond within. The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. There ain't nothing from the outside can lick any of us. Man must be arched and buttressed from within, else the temple wavers to dust. There is no reality except the one contained within us. Religious faith, indeed, relates to that which is above us, but it must arise from that which is within us. God creates the animals, man creates himself. Let women be provided with living strength of their own. Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor. Every man is his own ancestor, and every man his own heir. He devises his own future, and he inherits his own past. In the long run we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility. Our awesome responsibility to ourselves, to our children, and to the future is to create ourselves in the image of goodness, because the future depends on the nobility of our imaginings. Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. ... Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same. I, woman, give birth: and this time to myself. Exude happiness and you will feel it back a thousand times. What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want. You are the product of your own brainstorm. I long to put the experience of fifty years at once into your young lives, to give you at once the key to that treasure chamber every gem of which has cost me tears and struggles and prayers, but you must work for these inward treasures yourselves. There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self. Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands. You need to claim the events in your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality. I would not sit waiting for some value tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime. ... I would make something happen. I truly believe that women of my generation can bring a new cleansing element to American public life. Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise. Sometimes you gotta create what you want to be a part of. Circumstances-what are circumstances? I make circumstances. Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creature of man. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter. It is our relation to circumstances that determines their influence over us. The same wind that carries one vessel into port may blow another off shore. We will either find a way, or make one. - Hannibal People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. The people who get on in this world are they who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. Choice of attention-to pay attention to this and ignore that-is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences. Heaven and hell is right now. ... You make it heaven or you make it hell by your actions. Freedom means choosing your burden. We create our fate every day ... most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior. You have to take it as it happens, but you should try to make it happen the way you want to take it. The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction. Life is raw material. We are artisans. We can sculpt our existence into something beautiful, or debase it into ugliness. It's in our hands. The proverb warns that "You should not bite that hand that feeds you." But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself. If we live good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times. Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life. They have rights who dare defend them. Make good use of bad rubbish. Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly. Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up. Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddied? You are the one who must grow up. Some leaders are born women. Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail. A filly who wants to run will always find a rider. Each of us makes his own weather, determines the color of the skies in the emotional universe which he inhabits. Thinking is like loving and dying. Each of us must do it for himself. Be yourself and think for yourself; and while your conclusions may not be infallible, they will be nearer right than the conclusions forced upon you. Though reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things, our own meditation must form our judgement. He who has no opinion of his own, but depends upon the opinion and taste of others, is a slave. How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy. Let me listen to me and not to them. The efficient man is the man who thinks for himself. Learn to depend upon yourself by doing things in accordance with your own way of thinking. If we are not responsible for the thoughts that pass our doors, we are at least responsible for those we admit and entertain. Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depend upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. - Plato Happiness must be cultivated. It is like character. It is not a thing to be safely let alone for a moment, or it will run to weeds. We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers-you can blame anyone, but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you want to change, you're the one who has got to change. It's as simple as that, isn't it? Discontent is want of self-discipline; it is infirmity of will. Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response. The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things. Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. Happiness is not in our circumstances, but in ourselves. It is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel, like the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are. When I have been unhappy, I have heard an opera ... and it seemed the shrieking of winds; when I am happy, a sparrow's chirp is delicious to me. But it is not the chirp that makes me happy, but I that make it sweet. The U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. To believe that if only we had this or that we would be happy, or to pursue any excessive desire, diverts us from seeing that happiness depends on an adequate self. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral, and subject to chance. All times are beautiful for those who maintain joy within them; but there is no happy or favorable time for those with disconsolate or orphaned souls. Felicity, felicity ... is quaffed out of a golden cup ... the flavour is with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please. Some pursue happiness others create it. To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread. Man is the artificer of his own happiness. To wait for someone else, or to expect someone else to make my life richer, or fuller, or more satisfying, puts me in a constant state of suspension. I am my own heaven and hell! I am responsible for my own well-being, my own happiness. The choices and decisions I make regarding my life directly influence the quality of my days. If you do not find peace in yourself you will never find it anywhere else. To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you that you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. If people are suffering, then they must look within themselves. ... Happiness is not something ready-made [Buddha] can give you. It comes from your own actions. Blame yourself if you have no branches or leaves; don't accuse the sun of partiality. The opportunities for enjoyment in your life are limitless. If you feel you are not experiencing enough joy, you have only yourself to blame. Happiness is like time and space-we make and measure it ourselves; it is as fancy, as big, as little, as you please, just a thing of contrasts and comparisons. It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere. The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves. No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness. No-one gives joy or sorrow. ... We gather the consequences of our own deeds. Happiness depends upon ourselves. The amount of satisfaction you get from life depends largely on your own ingenuity, self-sufficiency, and resourcefulness. People who wait around for life to supply their satisfaction usually find boredom instead. Somebody's boring me; I think it's me. Being bored is an insult to oneself. When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored. If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches. Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. One has to handle these negative experiences alone. You can't get help from your friends or family. You're finally alone with it, and you have to come to grips with misfortune and go on. Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise. If you want to succeed, you must make your own opportunities as you go. It is sometimes the man who opens the door who is the last to enter the room. If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one. Every man is the architect of his own fortune. - Sallust A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. Man is still responsible. ... His success lies not with the stars, but with himself. He must carry on the fight of self-correction and discipline. No one can help you in holding a good job except Old Man You. No man will succeed unless he is ready to face and overcome difficulties and prepared to assume responsibilities. The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the sum of his own works. Under normal periods, any man's success hinges about 5 percent on what others do for him and 95 percent on what he does. If a man wants his dreams to come true, he must wake up. Pa, he always said a man had to look spry for himself, because nobody would do it for him; your opportunities didn't come knocking around, you had to hunt them down and hog-tie them. Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. Men at some time are masters of their fates. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. Mistakes fail in their mission of helping the person who blames them on the other fellow. We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until... we have stopped saying "It got lost," and say "I lost it." Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures. The day you take complete responsibility for yourself, the day you stop making excuses, that's the day you start your move to the top. It is a painful thing to look at your own trouble and know that you yourself, and no one else, has made it. When you blame others, you give up your power to change. Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. What fate can be worse than to know we have no one but ourselves to blame for our misfortunes! Fair play with others is primarily not blaming them for anything that is wrong with us. How we love to blame others for our misfortunes! Almost every individual who has lost money in stock speculation has on the tip of his tongue an explanation which he trots out to show that it wasn't his own fault at all.... Hardly one loser has the manliness to say frankly, "I was wrong." Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment and learn again to exercise ... his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals. The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He does not say, "My men were beaten," he says, "I was beaten." Debt is a trap which man sets and baits himself, and then deliberately gets into. God helps those who help themselves. I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings. It is vain to ask of the gods what man is capable of supplying for himself. - Epicurus The gods help those who help themselves. Ask God's blessing on your work, but don't ask him to do it for you. He who prays and labours lifts his heart to God with his hands. God gives every bird its food, but he does not throw it into the nest. Trust in Allah, but tie your camel first. Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry! God loves to help him who strives to help himself. Religious faith, indeed, relates to that which is above us, but it must arise from that which is within us. Even God lends a hand to honest boldness. - Menander Help yourself and heaven will help you. God has entrusted me with myself. The Ancient Mariner said to Neptune during a great storm, "O God, you will save me if you wish, but I am going to go on holding my tiller straight." If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it. To character and success, two things, contradictory as they may seem, must go together-humble dependence and manly independence; humble dependence on God and manly reliance on self. I am a moonbeam, free to go whenever I choose. My will shall shape my future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice, my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny. I had never been as resigned to ready-made ideas as I was to ready-made clothes, perhaps because although I couldn't sew, I could think. Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward. The basic freedom of the world is woman's freedom. Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be. You are the handicap you must face. You are the one who must choose your place. The best and most efficient pharmacy is within your own system. I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. Champions take responsibility. When the ball is coming over the net, you can be sure I want the ball. A man is a lion in his own cause. For they can conquer who believe they can. - Virgil I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was possible for me to execute myself. Doubt whom you will, but never yourself. No man should part with his own individuality and become that of another. Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. 
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