Alan Kay Quotes

My mother often told us that it is a poor dog that will not wag its own tail.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Taking the future in your own hands has a fantastic psychological impact.

Years ago I learned to be totally responsible for Dionne Warwick. I will not wait for opportunities. I will create them.

Don't hope someone gives you an opportunity: create one for yourself.

we cant wait for someone else to do it, we have to take matters into our own hands or it will never be done.

No one else has ever opened doors for me. I opened them myself.

When Marcus Garvey spoke about self-reliance, he wasn't only talking about people of colour. It's like self-reliance in general, for anyone. Just keep moving and moving within the right direction, and everything will be all right.

It's funny, everything is so much easier when you do it yourself.

If someone else isn't making it happen for you, make it happen yourself.

The idea that somebody else is going to swoop down and play the fairy godmother role is pretty unlikely, so why not take care of yourself?

I wanted to be an independent woman, a woman who could pay for her bills, a woman who could run her own life - and I became that woman.

You shape your own destiny.

The thing I hate most in acting is asking permission to do things. What you really want to do is say, 'This is my need; this is what's going to get me further; this is what's going to be alive. I don't ever say, 'Do you mind if...?' I just come in and do it.

If no one's doing the creative work that you want to do, do it yourself.

I think that certainly my choices empower me.

I would say to someone, 'Make your own stuff sooner.' Also, it's OK to say no to something if it doesn't feel right.

Life can be a lot broader... when you realize one simple thing: And that is that everything around us that we call life was made up by people who were no smarter than you. And you can build your own life that other people can live in. So build a life. Don't live one. Build one. Find your opportunity, and always be sexy.

Writing so that I can act became a way of having not more control over my future but not having to wait for permission. You can choose yourself. Hmm, who should play this part? I nominate me!

That's the kind of motif I bring to the books - that people take charge of their own lives.

Claiming your life for yourself feels like a huge deal until you do it.

The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important - and then get out of their way while they do it.

Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don't see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself.

Take destiny in your own hands.

I want people to see that you don't need to rely on other people to make your dreams happen: you have to grab them yourself.