Quotes about Self-reliance

If you don't protect yourself, you look like a fool asking somebody else to protect you. [..] A woman needs to support herself before she asks anyone else to support her.

under my eye, but not my thumb.

I can change by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

People and things don't stop our pain or heal us. In recovery, we learn that this is our job, and we can do it by using our resources: ourselves, our Higher Power, our support systems, and our recovery program.

If we abdicate responsibility for our choices, we may become angry, sometimes full of rage at others for running our lives, for telling us what to do. We need to take responsibility. We need to trust ourselves.

To believe in people, to believe in each person's inherent ability to think, feel, solve problems, and take care of themselves is a great gift we can give and receive from others.

Detachment is based on the premises that each person is responsible for himself, that we can't solve problems that aren't ours to solve, and that worrying doesn't help.

I had a mother who would never allow herself to be a victim no matter what happened… Never made excuses, and she never accepted an excuse from us. And if we ever came up with an excuse, she always said, Do you have a brain? And if the answer was yes, then she said, Then you could have thought your way out of it.

I recognized others' abilities as well. But in any career, whether it's that of a TV repairman, a musician, a secretary—or a surgeon—an individual must believe in himself and in his abilities. To do his best, one needs a confidence that says, "I can do anything, and if I can't do it, I know how to get help.

The bottom line was that we have only ourselves to blame. We create our own destiny by the way we do things. We have to take advantage of opportunities

I believe that many of our pressing racial problems will be taken care of when we who are among the minorities will stand on our own feet and refuse to look to anybody else to save us from our situation.

We were very poor. But between the covers of books I could go anywhere, I could be anybody, I could do anything. I began to read about people of great accomplishment. As I read those stories, I began to see a connecting thread. I began to see that the person who had the most to do with you and what happened to you in life, is you. You make decisions. You decide how much energy you want to put behind that decision.