self-determination

Person-centred counselling may be thought of as 'not enough'. In my experience it is. It allows for self-determination through an acknowledgement of a person's human rights.

Always in life an idea starts small, it is only a sapling idea, but the vines will come and they will try to choke your idea so it cannot grow and it will die and you will never know you had a big idea, an idea so big it could have grown thirty meters through the dark canopy of leaves and touched the face of the sky.' He looked at me and continued. 'The vines are people who are afraid of originality, of new thinking. Most people you encounter will be vines; when you are a young plant they are very dangerous.' His piercing blue eyes looked into mine.' Always listen to yourself, Peekay. It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life.

You made tools of us. Have you never considered: the thing of a tool is that anyone may use it.

And now, the end is near,And so I face the final curtain.My friend, I'll say it clear,I'll state my case, of which I'm certain.I've lived a life that's full.I've traveled each and every highway;And more, much more than this,I did it my way.

Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be...

We are only here for a little while, and our bodies belong to ourselves and no one else.

In fact, there is nothing so easily remade as our definitions of ourselves.

... no one can ever save someone else, you know? We can only save ourselves. You know that, don't you?

The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

There is no ideal world for you to wait around for. The world is always just what it is now, and it's up to you how you respond to it.

We must not allow other people__ limited perceptions to define us.

He loved me and didn't want me hurt. What was worse, he didn't even understand that I had the right to be hurt.

This is the twenty-first century - you have to know what you want, then set upon it with everything you've got.

On whose authority, who gives the right to religion, the law, medicine, the others, to choose on my behalf but without consulting me, the way, the place and the time I am allowed to die?

The best way to predict your future is to create it.

My family subscribed to this rigid belief system. They were unaware of the reality that gender, like sexuality, exists on a spectrum. By punishing me, they were performing the socially sanctioned practice of hammering the girl out of me, replacing her with tenets of gender-appropriate behavior. Though I would grow up to fit neatly into the binary, I believe in self-determination, autonomy, in people having the freedom to proclaim who they are and define gender for themselves. Our genders are as unique as we are. No one's definition is the same, and compartmentalizing a person as either a boy or a girl based entirely on the appearance of genitalia at birth undercuts our complex life experiences.

What's right about America is that although we have a mess of problems, we have great capacity - intellect and resources - to do some thing about them.