Quotessence
Home / Topics / Self Determination Quotes

Self Determination Quotes

Browse 754 quotes about Self Determination.

Related topics

PeopleIfsInspirationalLawWorldIndependenceMeanBelieveIndividualityInternationalNationsWay

Self Determination Quotes

“The establishment by the UN in 1975 of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People clearly affirmed the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination; and the requirements of a permanent population, a territory with reasonably clearly defined borders, an effective government, and independence from other States are at least arguably as well met as they were in the case of some other entities when they were admitted to the UN as States.”

Self DeterminationPalestinian People
Book:International Law: A Very Short Introduction
Create image

“This is the existential contradiction of the second modernity that defines our conditions of existence: we want to exercise control over our own lives, but everywhere that control is thwarted. Individualization has sent each one of us on the prowl for the resources we need to ensure effective life, but at each turn we are forced to do battle with an economics and politics from whose vantage point we are but ciphers. We live in the knowledge that our lives have unique value, but we are treated as invisible. As the rewards of late-stage financial capitalism slip beyond our grasp, we are left to contemplate the future in a bewilderment that erupts into violence with increasing frequency. Our expectations of psychological self-determination are the grounds upon which our dreams unfold, so the losses we experience in the slow burn of rising inequality, exclusion, pervasive competition, and degrading stratification are not only economic. They slice us to the quick in dismay and bitterness because we know ourselves to be worthy of individual dignity and the right to a life on our own terms.”

LifeExpectationsCapitalismInequalityControlSelf DeterminationModernityIndividualization
Book:The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Create image

“Instincts are older, but thoughts are recent, that's why instincts are more powerful than thoughts - that's why it takes great will power to express a thought through action, while instincts come so easily. However, if we continue practicing our thoughts long enough, eventually the instincts that hold power over us will turn powerless. And this my friend, ought to be the next step of our evolution, and that's why it's no longer merely a matter of natural selection, it's what I hereby dub "sapient selection", that is the process of determining the path of our evolution ourselves.”

EvolutionThoughtsPrejudiceBrainy QuotesSelf DeterminationNeuroscienceEvolutionary PsychologyNatural SelectionInstinctsSapient Selection
Book:Ain't Enough to Look Human
Create image

“Wrecked and despondent at midlife, I need to undertake a strict personal evaluation that will lead to personal transformation. I must be willing to start afresh and attempt to make myself anew. In order to begin all over and not culminate in the same deadhead rut as before, I admit to harboring personal insecurities and boldly confront my greatest fears. In order to establish an altered foundation that will support a revised self, I commence by asking the pertinent questions. If I run fast enough and long enough, can I quash slavish personal demons and capture an elusive self? Can I exercise the self-discipline to eliminate the artificial screens that I hide behind in order to peer out at the formidable world? Do I possess the personal audacity to explore unfamiliar terrain and the internal grit to dual the primal flex of nature’s power while accepting on equal terms the thrall and tragic beauty of surviving in a violent habitat?”

TransformationMemoirSelf DeterminationBurnoutPersonal TransformationMidlifeMemoir Writing Self Appraisal
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Do I live out the remainder of my life striving to increase a mental storehouse of intellectual knowledge or by expanding a state of conscious awareness? Should my ultimate goal be to decode all the paradoxes in life or nurture a state of cognitive awareness? Should I strive to develop internal peace, silence, and tranquility? Must I rely upon the intuitive self to reconnect innate root structure and link myself to the essential means of living life deeply? By courageously striving to conquer illicit personal desires, can I develop a state of mirror-like purity of consciousness that allows a person to serve as a gracious and unbiased witness to the surrounding world?”

ConsciousnessEnlightenmentConsciousTransformationSelf RealizationSelf DeterminationTranscendenceTransformSelf TransformationSelf Transcendence
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“The greatest gift that one generation bestows on its successors is striving valiantly to make every day of a person’s life count by working to enhance human knowledge and teaching what we learn to willing learners. Every generation of human beings owes a debt of immense gratitude to the forerunning generations who worked to solve problems that bedevil humanity and for exhibiting a profound reverence for all forms of life.”

GratitudeMemoirSelf RealizationReverenceSelf DeterminationSelf DevelopmentSelf TransformationReverence For LifeSelf Transcendence
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“What insistent questions must I ask and answer in order to uncover the essential truths for personal survival? Can I frame the crucial questions that self-revealing answers might stave off instant disintegration? Can I find a subject of intellectual investigation worthy of creating an enduring legacy? How do I eradicate from a secretive, brooding, and shut-in mind the insidious and incapacitating thoughts that turned me into an inert maumet or an empty-headed person? Must I accept the rheum of my timid meagerness? Alternatively, must I expunge all mucus remnants of my diseased former self? Can I shock myself awake from a zombie-like state of spiritual deadness? Can I create out of the phlegm of a frozen mind a new Adam that walks and talks for me? By destroying a former self, can I save myself and create a vessel of lifeworks that carries a stream of earnest thoughts into the minds of future readers?”

Self RealizationWritersSelf DeterminationWriters On WritingWriting LifeSelf DestructionMemoir WritingStory Of My LifeWriters On Thinking
Author:Kilroy J. Oldster
Create image

“Should a person devote their efforts to achieving their maximize potential, or dedicate their talent and abilities to accomplishing worldly projects that improve other people’s standard of living? Is it possible to be happy irrespective of the lack of financial remuneration obtained through personal efforts? Can a person attain happiness by discovering, developing, and honoring their aptitude and skills, working diligently to improve their own life and other people’s lives, while also striving to integrate all divergent aspects of their personality into a unifying self, i.e. integration of the id, ego, and superego? Can a person achieve a happy and meaningful life by pursing an artistic life of creation? Does granting ourselves free rein to produce artistic embodiments depicting the elemental evil underling our base nature rivaling with our preening desire to engage only in goodness inevitably give birth to our textured spiritual awareness?”

HappinessSelf AwarenessPersonal GrowthSelf RealizationSelf DeterminationMeaningful LifePurpose Driven Life
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Is it absurd compulsively to labor in an effort to express the present crucible of our earthly reality conjoined with our punch-holed dreams? Does penal work on a chain gang dull the senses or does all honest work give birth to a person’s creative sensibilities? Must we actively participate in all the evocative activities of life or risk becoming forever stymied by indifference, self-doubt, and by the petrifying summons of self-loathing? Is it absurd to dismiss ourselves and dejectedly resign ourselves to occupying a windowless soul? Must I accept living as an emotional midget? Should I capitulate to stumbling along frozen in a daze of bewildering hopelessness? Alternatively, can I impose a moratorium upon my present suffering and attempt to discern a better way to live? What is the correct path to end suffering and discover joy? No one else is interested in my story, but I still feel an irrepressible need to shape the tale of my travails into a storyboard format.”

MeaningfulSelf RealizationPurpose Of LifeSelf DeterminationSelf DevelopmentMeaningful LifePurpose Driven LifeMeaningfulnessMeaningful Living
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Can a person live without hope? Must a middle-aged man such as me who underwent a bevy of loss and failure aim to summon the interior moxie to watch the sunrise on each new day while wearing a faint smile of hope? Must I stoically resolve to endure bearing the weighty load of previous personal debacles? I gain nothing by wallowing in self-denunciation. Guilt and shame exact a severe tithe. I cannot lead a worthy life by tumbling into alcoholic numbness or a drug-induced pit.”

HopeShameGuiltHopefulSelf DeterminationSelf DestructionHopefulnessSelf Destructive BehaviorSelf Denunciation
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Human life might be predestined or susceptible to a modicum of alteration through a determined act of free will. Who is the warden controlling my fate? Can I create a new self-governing overseer to guide me through an underground tunnel of repressed desire? Can I inculcate myself from a diseased mind by discovering freedom from suffering? Can I chisel out a paradigmatic way to live righteously? Can I cut a groove in my heart and discover the lightness of soul that I seek? Can I discover a hidden key of enlightenment that allows me to manumit my enslaved spirit? Can I put an end to the atrocious evilness that haunts my existence? Can I burn a neural route through my brain that releases the intolerable pressure searing my tattered soul?”

IdentitySelf ImprovementSelf AwarenessPersonal GrowthPersonal DevelopmentSelf RealizationSelf DeterminationMeaningful LifePurpose Driven Life
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Perhaps the true purpose of life is simply to express ourselves as best we can. Maybe my ability to keep finding new challenges appropriate to my age is part of the happiness, the thing that keeps me young, creative, and full of life. The setbacks and the opposition I've encountered are all part of my happiness. I have grown as a result and am still able to lead a self-determined life.”

AgeHappinessGrowthChallengesPurpose Of LifeSelf DeterminationSelf Expression
Book:My Life at the Limit
Create image

“Chosen by Choice (The Sonnet) Choose yourself by yourself, Be the chosen by choice. Nobody's gonna come to choose you, Without any self-interest. Nobody's gonna pop out of fiction, And choose you to lift the world. The world is your family, You are their self-determined vanguard You are the chooser, you are the choice, You alone are the divine intervention. One who is responsible is also divine, What is indifferent is simply damnation. Choose yourself as the world's defender. There's no greater defender than an unbent lover.”

Service Of HumanitySaviorSelf DeterminationMessiahSocial WorkerHuman Rights ActivistDivine InterventionHumanitarian PoetrySocial Justice PoemThe Chosen One
Book:Bulldozer on Duty
Create image

“If you are born in the States, you've won a geographical jackpot. If you are born in a rich family, you've won a hereditary jackpot. I had neither. So I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps and turned my name into a nationality of its own, and my life into a heritage of its own - the nationality of assimilation, and the heritage of self-determination.”

MotivationalPerseveranceSelf DeterminationAmerican DreamSelf RelianceHuman Rights ActivistLife GoalsHumanitarian ScientistPurpose In LifePursuit Of Dreams
Book:Bulldozer on Duty
Create image

“Human evolution is essentially the progression of information gathering (knowledge) and consciousness, or the advancement in wisdom. A wise person is willing to learn at all stages of life by using their cognitive abilities open-mindedly to examine contradictory beliefs, and rationally meld various schools of thought into a living philosophy, developing over time a logical and systematic method to maintain and evaluate oneself in order to assist a person not merely survive but thrive.”

WisdomConsciousnessKnowledgeSelf RealizationPhilosophy Of LifeSelf DeterminationOpen MindOpen MindednessSelf EvaluationLiving Philosophy
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Finding the motivation to undertake your inner search needs Inspiration, vision and determination. To get there you have an obligation to be self-aware and you have a right to be grateful and compassionate with yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to ask your creator, and perhaps even those around you, for something you want, you just might get it. If you ask for something, ask for it with all your heart, because anything less is probably not worth having.”

Self AwarenessSelf DeterminationInspitational
Author:Michael G Sawaya
Create image

“Regardless of the physical world that a person finds himself or herself mired in, everyone can attempt to control the angle of their psychological reference point through constructive self-evaluation and by conscientiously refining their heightened cognitive viewpoint in order to revise and upgrade their mental autobiography. Apprehending our self and assessing our place in the world is an inherent activity of all human beings. Each one of us must make our own way and determine how to fit into a world that is constantly changing. Each of us posits our perception of a self and makes conjectures regarding how the world functions.”

PerspectiveSelf AwarenessSelf DeterminationSelf PerceptionViewpointSelf EvaluationSelf IdentificationSelf EvaluatingMind ChatterFit Into The World
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Our genetic map makes us human. Our physical and emotional genomes establish the baseline for us to operate. When we strike out in the world, we seek out vivid encounters with other people and nature that speak loudest to ourselves. What we make of our brilliant experiences modulates who we become. The way we think, feel, and express emotions enables us to personalize our experiences.”

Self RealizationSelf DeterminationExperiencesMemoir WritingWriting MemoirPersonal IdentityStory Of Your LifePersonal ExperienceVision Quest
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“Though the uprising had freed the vassals from any obligations they might have had to their former masters, it had yet to profit them. In fact, as the villagers had to man their new borders, build their own prisons, police their markets, and look after the judges they appointed, the amount of money that went to communal use steadily increased. Many ended up paying out more this way than they ever had under the deposed system. But the uprising was never undertaken for riches; it was about basic human dignity. Nor was it for revenge, but self-determination; not for shedding blood, but ending bloodshed. Above all, it was about realizing fair access to natural resources. Two years after discarding the old shackles, they kissed their wives and children good-bye and headed for the trenches, many of the village men would look back at the distances they had traveled and shake their heads in disbelief. Indeed, what an exhilarating feeling it must have been for someone who had never made a decision for himself to have, finally, his destiny firmly in his grasp: to grow the crop of his choice, to paint his home the color he fancied, to marry his daughter to the man he favored, and to be able to send his children to school, all without fear of repercussions from a feudal master. What is more, the peasant no longer needed to submit himself to the humility of waiting on his master’s guests while his wife and daughter labored in the kitchen, preparing food they were not allowed to sample. The peasant might die fighting to hold on to his newly gained freedom; in the past he had always been dying fighting for someone else’s cause. This was a feeling many outsiders, Duke Ashenafi and Reverend Yimam, above all, would never understand.”

RevolutionLiberationSelf DeterminationEmancipation
Book:The God Who Begat a Jackal: A Novel
Create image