top of page
.png){kind=small}
Autonomy Quotes
"Nobody will live your life for you."
19
"We are always - always- in choice."
15
"As a writer no one's gonna tell me how to write, I'm gonna write the way I wanna write!"
14
"If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself."
14
"I do not see the point in dressing and acting and speaking in a way that makes you feel more comfortable and me feel less comfortable."
13
"I'm going to do things when they are right for me."
12
"I don't understand, then, why, in the midst of all this, pregnant women - women trying to make rational decisions about their futures and, usually, that of their families, too - should be subject to more pressure about preserving life than, say, Vladimir Putin, the World Bank, or the Catholic Church."
12
"Once you've chosen a man, don't try to change him, I wrote, with more confidence. It can't be done. More important -- don't let him try to change you. He can't do it either, but men always try."
12
"I definitely do things on my terms, it may not seem that way but I actually do."
11
"Never adjust your day to suit someone else's happiness. When riding on God's good grace, roll with things your way."
11
"Unless you accept anyone to be your boss, no man can be your boss!"
10
"There was no better path to autonomy for an ambitious young businesswoman than to be married off to a respectable corpse."
10
"Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul."
10
"Without asking her permission, someone is trying to intrude her life, draw her attention, in short, to bother her."
9
"As a Christian and a feminist, the most important message I can carry and fight for is the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women are a crucial part of that. It is a moral necessity that we not be forced to bring children into the world for whom we cannot be responsible and adoring and present. We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society."
9
"But deciding not to have children is a very, very hard decision for a woman to make: the atmosphere is worryingly inconducive to saying, "I choose not to," or "it all sounds a bit vile, tbh." We call these women "selfish" The inference of the word "childless" is negative: one of lack, and loss. We think of nonmothers as rangy lone wolves--rattling around, as dangerous as teenage boys or men. We make women feel that their narrative has ground to a halt in their thirities if they don't "finish things" properly and have children."
8
"You had to live in your own bubble. You couldn't force your way into someone else's, because then it wouldn't be a bubble any more."
8
"Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it."
8
"I know that [civilized men] do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they enjoy in their chains.... But when I see [barbarous man] sacrifice pleasures, repose, wealth, power, and life itself for the preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see animals born free and despising captivity break their heads against the bars of their prison; when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I feel it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom."
7
"I can't be my own person, if i constantly require someone else to hold me together."
6
"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."
6
"Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas-that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!"
5
"Becoming a part of a movement doesn't help anybody think clearly."
5
"Every woman who chooses - joyfully, thoughtfully, calmly, of their own free will and desire - not to have a child does womankind a massive favour in the long term. We need more women who are allowed to prove their worth as people; rather than being assessed merely for their potential to create new people. After all, half those new people we go on to create are also women - presumably themselves to be judged, in their futures, for not making new people. And so it will go on and on..."
5
"In that instance, my body had decided that this baby was not to be and had ended it. This time, it is my mind that has decided that this baby was not to be. I don't believe one's decision is more valid than the other. They both know me. They are both equally capable of deciding what is right."
4
"But I am, personally, not a gambler. I wouldn't spend £1 on the lottery, let alone take a punt on a pregnancy. The stakes are far, far too high. I can't agree with a society that would force me to bet on how much I could love under duress."
3
"My opinion is, of course, completely my own. I would not impose it on anyone else and decline any pressure to change it."
3
"It must be freely admitted that there is a sort of circle here from which it seems impossible to escape. In the order of efficient causes we assume ourselves free, in order that in the order of ends we may conceive ourselves as subject to these laws because we have attributed to ourselves freedom of will; for freedom and self-legislation of will are both autonomy..."
1
bottom of page