Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the ’40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.

I mean, I never liked being told what to do. It’s one of the reasons I dropped out of school.

I’d read up on the history of our country and I’d become fascinated with the story of the Alamo. To me it represented the fight for freedom, not just in America, but in all countries.

Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.

Man can be understood only by ascending from physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. In other words, he is first of all a cosmic problem.

Work alone is noble.

Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

For me, it’s enough that I have the first and last word.

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.

Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work.

Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.

If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.

I don’t see any possibility of Britain and the U.S. allowing a sovereign independent Iraq; that’s almost inconceivable.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

I’m of the school of thought where if you can’t sort something out for yourself then no one can help you.

We have always been prepared to negotiate with the U.S. government everything that has to do with bilateral relations, on a basis of the strictest mutual respect for the sovereign rights of each country. We will never try to ask the government of the United States to change its economic and political system.

God created man, but I could do better.

I found it hard to be young. When I was married in my twenties, I hated being regarded as ‚the little wife.‘ You don’t know what it was like then! I’d never even written a cheque. I had to ask my husband for money for groceries.

I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.

A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.

A man’s true character comes out when he’s drunk.

No one tells me what to do with my music. Real. My mom doesn’t tell what to say, how is someone else going to?

A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.

A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.

Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier.

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

I learned to fly a few years ago in England. It’s the only place I’m completely alone – up in the air, detached from everything.

A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.

A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.

Remember: your bosses prefer to keep you in dependent positions. It is in their interest that you do not become self-reliant, and so they will tend to hoard information. You must secretly work against this and seize this information for yourself.

Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

This man used to go to school with his dog. Then they were separated. His dog graduated!

Beauty is the greatest seducer of man.

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.

A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

I think, when you are growing up, you have to pull apart from what your mother wants or needs. You’ve got to go your own way, and that’s what I did.

Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want. I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child. I feel quite independent of anyone.

No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else.

The discontented man finds no easy chair.

I’m a businessman as well as an entertainer. The reason why is because I want to own whatever I’m doing. I don’t want to work for other people forever.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.

Man – a being in search of meaning.

There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

We do not need the empire to give us anything.

To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.

Nothing is more precious than independence and liberty.

I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man.

How one life turns out is not dependent on what people do to us or what they don’t do for us.