Self Determination Quotes - Page 5

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.

I don't entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I'm me. God knows, I'm me.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

With a clear idea of what you want in life, you need to actively pursue your dream. Half-hearted attempts will not work.

Act as if it was and it will be.

Awake. Reach out. Press onward.

Life has a tendency to provide a person with what they need in order to grow. Our beliefs, what we value in life, provide the roadmap for the type of life that we experience. A period of personal unhappiness reveals that our values are misplaced and we are on the wrong path. Unless a person changes their values and ideas, they will continue to experience discontentment.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

A person does not reach the pinnacle of self-realization without relentlessly exploring the parameters of the self, exhausting their psychic energy coming to know oneself. Without society to rebel against and to sail away from, there would be no advances in civilization; there would be no need for healers and mystics, priests and artist, or shaman and writers. It is our curiosity and refusal to be satisfied with the status quo that compels us to challenge ourselves to learn and continue to grow. We only establish inner peace of mind with acceptance of the world, with the recognition of our connection to the entirety of the universe, and understanding that chaos and change are inevitable. We must also love because without love there are no acts of creation. Without love, humankind is a spasmodic pool of brutality and suffering. Love is a balm. It cures human aches and pains; it unites couples, families, and cultures. Love is a creative force, without love there is no art or religion. Art expresses thought and feelings, an articulation of adore and reverence.

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself.

First, be better than yourself, then strive to better than your competitors.

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.

Dance to the music of your soul.

Find your purpose and passionately live it.

The benefits often outweigh the suffering. Never concentrate on the pain, focus on the reward.

Do not quit. Hang on the wings of hope.

You've already decided what you're going to do, and all that's left is to set the wheels in motion. I mean, it's your life. Basically, you gotta go with what you think is right.

Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

(Response to King Erik XIV of Sweden's proposal of marriage:)"[W]hile we perceive ... the zeal and love of your mind towards us is not diminished, yet in part we are grieved that we cannot gratify your Serene Highness with the same kind of affection. And that indeed does not happen because we doubt in any way of your love and honour, but, as often we have testified both in words and writing, that we have never yet conceived a feeling of that kind of affection towards anyone.We therefore beg your Serene Highness again and again that you be pleased to set a limit to your love, that it advance not beyond the laws of friendship for the present nor disregard them in the future. ... We certainly think that if God ever direct our hearts to consideration of marriage we shall never accept or choose any absent husband how powerful and wealthy a Prince soever. But that we are not to give you an answer until we have seen your person is so far from the thing itself that we never even considered such a thing. I have always given both to your brother ... and also to your ambassador likewise the same answer with scarcely any variation of the words, that we do not conceive in our heart to take a husband but highly commend this single life, and hope that your Serene Highness will no longer spend time in waiting for us.

In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "woman is a divine creature," we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that "a woman is as good as a man," without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: (...) that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.

The focus on the desired outcome will push you through every difficulty.

As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.

Let him who would move the world first move himself.

Each of us channel through the rest of us, which is true on every plane of being and in every field of enterprise and in all walks of life.

Be strong. You will overcome the challenge.

This should be one of the basic attitudes—not to think about what the other is doing. That is his life. If he decides to live it that way, that is his business. Who are you even to have an opinion about it? Even to have an opinion means that you are ready to interfere, you have already interfered.

You create the life you wish by your thoughts, speech and actions.

A person begins to live a moral life when they cease asking what life will provide them and begins to determine what he or she expects from oneself.

Self-development requires direct action. Knowledge must precede action. The self’s relation to the world must be grounded in reality through ideas and thoughts. Self-reflection and introspection expands our appreciation of life.

Our thoughts shape us. We become our obsessions. Our thoughts can enslave us or save us.

In all spheres of life, there are constraints. You have to develop your own strategy to overcome each constraint.

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

[In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation of the woman.

Feeding the ego is starving the wisdom, the choice is yours.

I will pursue the dream, no matter how long it takes to fulfil it.

You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.

Work hard to fulfill your dreams.

If I simply look at the map that I’ve so tediously created, it will explain why I’m laying at the bottom of this cliff looking up.

You have great talents. Aim for God best for your life.

Freedom is the grace of free-will.

When you start loving yourself and respecting your time and energy, things will change. Get to know your worth, and your value will go up.

I can weave threads of myself into a tapestry already designed by others.

Read, mediate and speak the word of God into your mind, soul and spirit.

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.

Golden possibilities exist in every adversity.

Now look at me! Take a good look! I was born and I knew I was alive and I knew what I wanted. What do you think is alive in me? Why do you think I'm alive? Because I have a stomach and eat and digest the food? Because I breathe and work and produce more food to digest? Or because I know what I want, and that something which knows how to want—isn't that life itself? And who—in this damned universe—who can tell me why I should live for anything but for that which I want?

Failure is a sign post, directing the right road for life’s journey.

The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don't let them put you in that position.

The quest for learning is the quest for self-discovery.

No person can claim to be anything more or anything less than his or her individual assimilation of a lifelong symposium of inimitable physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual occurrences. Simply put, we each place our own individualized stamp upon the meaning of life. How we live, how we struggle, and how we die reflects what life means to each of us. We are all students of life, we are a product of what we pay attention to, what we observe, and experience, and what subjects arrest our minds.

The Universe supports doers.

You have to conquer every obstacle to realize the goal.

No matter what you say to someone else, you always hear it first.

In the learning process, a learner does encounter some difficulty. But with diligent, you will master the act.

We are all capable of being great dreamers. We must awaken the divinity within us.

It can be done. It will be done.

As the Universe brings your desires towards you, sometimes you must take the path it lays out for you so that you can be in the right place to receive it.

All roads taken lead us only to ourselves.

Be determined to create the life you want.

Every man has within him only one life and one nature ... It behooves a man to look within himself and turn to the best dedication possible those endowments he has from his Maker. You do no wrong in questioning what once you held to be right for you, if now it has come to seem wrong. Put away all thought of being bound. We do not want you bound. No one who is not free can give freely.