Quotes About Independence

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
― Coco Chanel

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?”
― Anaïs Nin

“It’s probably not just by chance that I’m alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless he’s terribly strong. And if he’s stronger than I, I’m the one who can’t live with him. … I’m neither smart nor stupid, but I don’t think I’m a run-of-the-mill person. I’ve been in business without being a businesswoman, I’ve loved without being a woman made only for love. The two men I’ve loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness. I’ve done my best, in regard to people and to life, without precepts, but with a taste for justice.”
― Coco Chanel

“I'd rather die my way than live yours.”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“I'm single because I was born that way.”
― Mae West

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
― Rumi, Essential Rumi

“Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.”
― Mae West, The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said

“I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Then, one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
― Socrates

“It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.”
― Betty Friedan

“I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.”
― Howard Zinn

“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to, and I've made enough money to support myself, and ain't afraid of being alone.”
― Katharine Hepburn

“I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.”
― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

“Most men claim to desire driven, independent and confident women. Yet when confronted with such a creature reverence often evolves into resent. For just like women, men need to be needed.”
― Tiffany Madison

“So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“There are some who want to get married and others who don't. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead.”
― Greta Garbo

“When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment.”
― Warren Farrell

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid ... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight

“The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether