self-determination

The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

Self-determination could mean independence, confederacy, federal and autonomy.

I__ like them to appreciate the power of the individual__nd I don__ mean me; I mean the power each person has to make choices and be accountable for himself or herself. I__e noticed that people are quick to put you in a category__f you come from this place then you are that thing. But I__e never placed much value in statistics and trends, bar graphs and socioeconomic data that sum people up. I stop listening when somebody asks me if I know what my chances are. I don__ know that I believe in probability. People are inexplicable and incomprehensible, and nobody really knows what__ possible until they try. I prefer the exceptions to the rules. I like people who try, even when their chances are zero.

Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will

Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might to _ my own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown-instincts, no matter how great the storm. And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've fished in it for my art. This turbulent sea was the sea outside my bedroom window in Bombay. It is the sea by which I was born, and which I carry within me wherever I go.

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

The only life worth living is the one we take responsibility for choosing.

Where tradition tells us that people are best kept under control and denied freedom of expression and action, humanistic psychology argues for liberation, more open decision-making and a sharing of power and control.

you're not a bad person because you want to be yourself.

Best be yourself, imperial, plain, and true.

I judge the world by my own lightsand I come by my own hand.

You are not stuck where you are unless you decide to be.

Attack the evil that is within yourself, rather than attacking the evil that is in others.

A man must choose his own way of life, and_it is only by following out one__ own bent that there can be the really harmonious life._ [In an interview conducted by Bram Stoker]

Self-preservation and determination meant she could get away with anything. As her law-abiding, conventionally minded daughter, I secretly envied her this. She was not the clinging-vine type, nor one who could coax sugar from a lemon. Hers was the frontal attack with no inhibitions. She told the Nazis you could not trust Hitler, and they let her go. In the days of chaperones, she hitch-hiked a ride on a French destroyer along the coast of Crete; 'All quite proper, I had my cook with me,' she explained.

...wanting change is step one, but step two is taking it.

The day you ever have that much control over my behavior, it will be because somebody's asking you, should she get the pine box or a plain white shroud?