Self-Determination Quotes

My upbringing was completely liberal from the start. In fact, I didn't even have a Muslim identity.

People have given me the freedom and believe in me enough to say if I want to do these things that I will find a way to make it work. I don't know if they think I'm crazy, drug damaged or just an old weirdo.

Dearest Madam: We your servants join together and thoughts it better to write you a nice loving letter which will tell you about all our wishes. We wish to have your laws in our towns … Plenty wars here in our country. Plenty murder and plenty idol worshippers …. We have spoken to the English consul plenty times about having an English government here. We never have an answer from you, so we wish to write you ourselves.

I have no intention of being a potted plant, and just getting watered every so often.

To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.

Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or human happiness or a quiet conscience.

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.

No people likes to be ruled by foreigners.

Only freedom can make security secure.

Your life is yours to live, no matter how you choose to live it. When you do not think about how you intend to live it, it lives you. When you occupy it, step into it consciously, you live it.

I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

We reject segregation even more militantly than you say you do! We want separation, which is not the same! The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that segregation is when your life and liberty are controlled, regulated, by someone else. To segregate means to control. Segregation is that which is forced upon inferiors by superiors. But separation is that which is done voluntarily, by two equals - for the good of both!

Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate.

We are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as human beings. We are fighting for human rights.

I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned. Their health care decisions should be theirs and theirs alone to make.

Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

In a hundred years to come my people will not be fit for liberty. They do not know what it is….Despotism is the proper government for them.

The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.

Forward, without ever turning back. ... All wars of independence have been obliged to suffer terrible tests.

Being proactive is more than taking initiative. It is recognizing that we are responsible for our own choices and have the freedom to choose based on principles and values rather than on moods or condition. Proactive people are agents of change and choose not to be victims, to be reactive, or to blame others.

No one is coming to save you.