Autonomous Quotes

• Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations.

  Vaclav Havel

  Respect, Independent, Self

  "Living in Truth". Book by Vaclav Havel, 1986.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The good man is he who rules himself as he does his own property: his autonomous being is modelled on material power.

  Theodor Adorno

  Men, Good Man, Doe

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.185, Verso

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Today we are raised with the notion that to be secure is to be financially autonomous. Amassing wealth is viewed as the primary rite of passage to a secure, autonomous existence.

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Today, Wealth, Existence

  Jeremy Rifkin (1992). “Biosphere politics: a cultural odyssey from the middle ages to the new age”, HarperCollins

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• This nation can no longer tolerate the autonomous conduct of any single service. A waste of the resources of America in spendthrift defense is an invitation to disaster for America.

  Louis A. Johnson

  America, Waste, Defense

  62 Copy quote

• The one thing about program television that's absolutely incompatible with any concept of art is that all decisions have to be made by program directors, whereas art is autonomous. It may be dependent, but it knows no superiors.

  Alexander Kluge

  Art, Decision, Television

  7 Copy quote

• There's a certain amount of sympathy here for the Bush administration's problem, which is they would like to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they would like to have the Kurds autonomous.

  Les Aspin

  Sympathy, Hussein, Administration

  7 Copy quote

• In poetic language, in which the sign as such takes on an autonomous value, this sound symbolism becomes an actual factor and creates a sort of accompaniment to the signified.

  Roman Jakobson

  Symbolism, Sound, Language

  9 Copy quote

• Osama bin Laden, the person, more likely serves the function of a stand-in. Compare the new terrorists with partisans or conventional terrorists in Israel. These people often fight in a decentralized manner in small, autonomous units, too.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Fighting, Israel, People

  "Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida". Book by Giovanna Borradori, 2003.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.

  Vaclav Havel

  Respect, Peace, Freedom

  "Living in Truth". Book by Vaclav Havel, 1986.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• In Boston they have gone from large autonomous high schools to smaller schools within the same building.

  Michael Welch

  School, Boston, Gone

  7 Copy quote

• Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

  Michael Palin

  Lying, Government, Holy Grail

  "Fictional character: Dennis". "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", 1975.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor, just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

  Graham Chapman

  Mean, Holy Grail, Peasants

  7 Copy quote

• Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government.

  Graham Chapman

  Lying, Government, Holy Grail

  "Fictional character: Dennis". "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", www.imdb.com. March 14, 1975.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• All great enterprises have a pearl of faith at their core, and this must be ours: that Americans are still a people born to liberty.

  Mitch Daniels

  People, Liberty, Pearls

  Keynote Speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee, delivered 11 February 2011, Ronald Reagan Centennial Dinner, Washington, D.C.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The white race is the cancer of human history.

  Susan Sontag

  Cancer, Race, White

  "What's Happening in America" (1966)

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Technologically, modern man does everything he can do-he functions on this single boundary principle. Modern man, seeing himself as autonomous, with no personal-infinite God who has spoken, has no adequate universal to supply an adequate second boundary condition; and man being fallen is not only finite, but sinful. Thus man's pragmatically made choices have no reference point beyond human egotism. It is dog eat dog, man eat man, man eat nature.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Dog, Men, Choices

  7 Copy quote

• God has ordained the state as a delegated authority; it is not autonomous. The state is to be an agent of justice, to restrain evil by punishing the wrongdoer, and to protect the good in society. When it does the reverse, it has no proper authority. It is then a usurped authority and as such it becomes lawless and is tyranny.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Evil, Justice, Doe

  12 Copy quote

• Before a leader can be accepted, let alone succeed, autonomous professionals must agree to be influenced by that person.

  David Maister

  Inspiring, Leader, Succeed

  4 Copy quote

• The essence of self-fulfillment and autonomous culture is an unshakable egotism.

  H. L. Mencken

  Self, Essence, Culture

  7 Copy quote

• Nature is always trying to tell us that we are not so superior or independent or alone or autonomous as we may think.

  Wendell Berry

  Independent, Thinking, Always Trying

  Wendell Berry (2012). “It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture & Other Essays”, p.27, Counterpoint Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If within the last century art conceived as an autonomous activity has come to be invested with an unprecedented stature - the nearest thing to a sacramental human activity acknowledged by secular society - it is because one of the tasks art has assumed is making forays into and taking up positions on the frontiers of consciousness (often very dangerous to the artist as a person) and reporting back what's there.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Secular Society, Tasks

  "Styles of Radical Will" by Susan Sontag, (p. 45), 1966.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone — its ideologies and inventions — which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.

  Susan Sontag

  Cancer, Civilization, White

  'Partisan Review' Winter 1967, p. 57

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• there is every reason to fear that the State is growing ever more powerful, more autonomous, more indifferent to its own inhabitants.

  Charles A. Reich

  Powerful, Growing, Reason

  charles a. reich (1970). “the greening of america”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement - the number restriction (two and only two) - is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Gay, Individual Choice, Two

  "Pandora and Polygamy". jewishworldreview.com. March 17, 2006.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• While much of modern behavioral and social science treats individuals as autonomous agents, it is absolutely clear that the way we think and act is enormously influenced by the culture in which we live. It also is clear that the major elements of modern culture-science, technology, law, music, and religion-have evolved over time in a quite concrete sense of the term. Mesoudi makes these arguments very well and his book is a very good read.

  Richard R. Nelson

  Book, Thinking, Technology

  5 Copy quote