William Powell Quotes

Ultimately the greatest help is self-help.

People ask me how I manage without a man in the same tone they might ask someone how they're doing with just one lung, but it's not like that at all.

If you help a chicken out of an egg, most of the time that bird will die. If you help a moth out of a cocoon, it'll die because they don't go through that struggle and maturation. I can give you a fish for the day and you'll eat a day, but if I teach you to fish, you'll eat for a lifetime. Maybe even start a business.

Exercises cultivated self-reliance - the foundation of courage.

No god save self, that is the way to live.

There is no feeling in this world to be compared with self-reliance--do not sacrifice that to anything else.

Freedom is the slogan of the strong, who feel self confident, self sufficient to do it alone.

Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self reliant enough to be free.

I'm very involved with learning to be self-sufficient.

The great lesson that nature seems to teach us at all ages is self-dependence, self-protection, self-support. In the hours of our keenest sufferings all are thrown wholly on themselves for consolation.

A woman knows she can walk away from a pot to tend something else and the pot will go on boiling; if she couldn't this world would end at once.

I have realized that part of being Dauntless is being willing to make things more difficult for yourself in order to be self-sufficient. There's nothing especially brave about wandering dark streets with no flashlight, but we are not supposed to need help, even from light. We are supposed to be capable of anything. I like that. Because their might come a day when there is no flashlight, there is no gun, there is no guiding hand. And I want to be ready.

Every form of true education trains the student in self-reliance

The divide between me and the modern world is growing further because I to a larger degree manage to rid myself of my dependence on the modern world. If the modern world collapsed tomorrow I would be fine, and I see so many others who would not be.

I sleep at night; I do not think about anything. I put everything in my bag and go to sleep. Whatever you can do to me, it does not affect me. I started my life, my own life. I did not inherit it.

I've often said that the most important thing you can give your children is wings. Because, you're not gonna always be able to bring food to the nest. You're... sometimes... they're gonna have to be able to fly by themselves.

I left my marriage knowing I'd have to work. I have.

I've always wanted to call the shots because I would rather fail than not have a chance to figure it out on my own.

If you always have a crutch, you don't learn anything.

The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.

Hero shows you how to solve the problem - yourself.

I think that if all kids aspire to reach a point where they could feed themselves and a few of their friends, this would be good for the world surely.

I knew that if-God forbid-anything ever happened in my life, I needed to know how to take care of myself.

I'm not tough, and I never have been. I suppose over the years I've built up kind of a veneer to protect myself because I have functioned on my own for a long, long time, and I have never had a lot of flunkies preceding me to clear the way.

If you give a person a fish, they'll fish for a day. But if you train a person to fish, they'll fish for a lifetime.