Quotes about Independence

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, Who are you? Unhand me: I will be dependent no more. Ah! seest thou not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's, because we are more our own?

Insist upon yourself. Be original.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

Ralph Waldo Emerson "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." ? Ralph Waldo Emerson

And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.

A man must consider what rich realms he abdicates when he becomes a conformist

Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else's head?

It is better to be the thorn in the side of your friend than his echo

Good bye, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men.