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Self Determination Quotes

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Self Determination Quotes

“Freedom guides our actions in powerful ways. I hadn't been so much under the external control of other people as my own rigid belief system. The one that told me to conform to a set of rules. I hadn't even thought through and honestly considered whether it was a good choice or not.”

“Human beings possess the gift of personal freedom and liberty of the mind. We each possess the sovereignty over the body and mind to define ourselves and embrace the values that we wish to exemplify. Personal autonomy enables humans to take independent action and use reason to establish moral values. We are part of nature. Consciousness, human cognition, and awareness of our own mortality allow us to script an independent survival reality and not merely react to environmental forces.”

“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.”

“With regard to complex trauma survivors, self-determination and autonomy require that the therapist treat each client as the "authority" in determining the meaning and interpretation of his or her personal life history, including (but not limited to) traumatic experiences (Harvey, 1996). Therapists can inadvertently misappropriate the client's authority over the meaning and significance of her or his memories (and associated symptoms, such as intrusive reexperiencing or dissociative flashbacks) by suggesting specific "expert" interpretations of the memories or symptoms. Clients who feel profoundly abandoned by key caregivers may appear deeply grateful for such interpretations and pronouncements by their therapists, because they can fulfill a deep longing for a substitute parent who makes sense of the world or takes care of them. However, this delegation of authority to the therapist can backfire if the client cannot, or does not, take ownership of her or his own memories or life story by determining their personal meaning.Moreover, the client can be trapped in a stance of avoidance because trauma memories are never experienced, processed, and put to rest. Helping a client to develop a core sense of relational security and the capacity to regulate (and recover from) extreme hyper- or hypoarousal is essential if the client is to achieve a self-determined and autonomous approach to defining the meaning and impact of trauma memories, a crucial goal of posttraumatic therapy.”

“Although our intrinsic nature and unconscious processes, which defy human cognition substantially influence us, every person possess a liberal dosage of personal autonomy to determine the ultimate essence of their existence. Nature’s endowments enable every person to declare their determined purpose, and deploy the human allotment of free will to pursue their driving passion. With courage, creativity, and effort every person seeks to realize their ultimate embodiment.”

“Men are never selfish. They’re smart. Women are always selfish. You want to be single? Selfish. You’re a wife and mother and do anything other than dote on your husband and children? Selfish. I want you and your sisters to learn to take that word as a compliment. Anyone who says that to you is trying to discourage you from doing what you want. That’s how you know you’re doing something right.”

“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.”

“We all have vices, visible and invisible. Some we deliberately keep secret. Others we don’t even realize or we refuse to admit we have…Vices can be lots of fun, or they can turn your life into a living hell. Accept them for what they are, just another aspect of the mind’s creation, and you can enjoy them—if you choose—without being broken by them. - Zeena Schreck for VICE Magazine”

“You can do anything you want. You don't believe me. You think, she's out of her head. Yeah, I'm out of my head- on being me. What are you on? On being them. You don't even know. I bet you were never given a chance to know. ....Listen. You can be anything you want to be. Be careful. It's a spell. It's magic. Listen to the words.... You are anything...everyone, anyone. ...You listen to them, teachers, parents, politicians. They're always saying, if you steal you're a thief, if you sleep aroung you're a slut, if you take drugs you're a junkie. They want to get inside your head and control you with their fear. ...Don't play their game. Nothing can touch you; you stay beautiful.”

“Nothing is easier than stamping your foot and shouting: ''That's mine!’ It is immeasurably harder to proclaim: ‘You may live as you please.’ We cannot, in the latter end of the twentieth century. live in the imaginary world in which our last, not very bright Emperor came to grief. Surprising though it may be, the prophecy of our Vanguard Doctrine that nationalism would fade has not come true. In the age of the atom and of cybernetics, it has for some reason blossomed afresh. Like it or not, the time is at hand when we must payout on our promissory notes guaranteeing self-determination and independence—pay up of our own accord. and not wait to be burned at the stake, drowned in rivers, or beheaded. We must prove our greatness as a nation not by the vastness of our territory. not by the number of peoples under our tutelage, but by the grandeur of our actions. And by the depth of our tilth in the lands that remain when those who do not wish to live with us are gone.”

“Bevíem a glops aspres vins de burla el meu poble i jo. Escoltàvem forts arguments del sabre el meu poble i jo. Una tal lliçó hem hagut d'entendre el meu poble i jo. La mateixa sort ens uneix per sempre: el meu poble i jo. Senyor, servidor? Som indestriables el meu poble i jo. Tenim la raó contra bords i lladres el meu poble i jo. Salvàvem els mots de la nostra llengua el meu poble i jo. A baixar graons de dol apreníem el meu poble i jo. Davallats al pou, esguardem enlaire el meu poble i jo. Ens alcem tots dos en encesa espera, el meu poble i jo.”

“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. 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. 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.”

“Why some people feel more comfortable in the “margin” of society, may simply be that it imparts them more breathing space, shores up their identity, embodies a gateway to self-determination, and confers them a sense of sovereignty, allowing more time for stressless apprehension and thoughtful reflection. (“If he doesn't play ball » )”

“Our lives are nothing but a short span of time. And if we spend tons of time earning money that we simply throw away, then we're throwing away part of our potential.”

“The mysteries of life include the external and the internal conundrums that each person encounters in a world composed of competing ideologies and agents of change. Conflicting ideas include political, social, legal, and ethical concepts. Agents of change include environmental factors, social pressure to conform, aging, and the forces inside us that made us into whom we are as well as the forces compelling us to be a different type of person.”

“The First Human (Sonnet 2632) Apes have lords and ladies, I don't. Apes have kings and queens, I don't. My time is born of soil and streets, my calendar transcends rome and greece. Apes have highnesses and excellencies, for apes have compost for a brain. Ape chase the "after", over life, for apes have alcohol in their vein. No wall is tall enough to contain my height, no pulpit sacred enough to baptize my eye, no table broad enough to accommodate my shoe, no accolade is bright enough to add to my light. Apes have cops and courts, I don't, for apes have guano for a cortex. I don't need angels in the air, I carry my wings in my pocket.”

“In ancient times, the greatest source of freedom was believed to be self-knowledge, in the Middle Ages - self-discipline, in the modern era - self-determination, while today it is believed to be self-satisfaction. The first liberates the mind, the second the spirit, the third the will, while the fourth - the desire to get rid of the other three.”

“We are involved in a struggle for liberation: liberation from the exploitive and dehumanizing system of racism, from the manipulative control of a corporate society; liberation from the constrictive norms of 'mainstream' culture, from the synthetic myths that encourage us to fashion ourselves rashly from the without (reaction), instead of the within (creation).”