Delmore Schwartz Quotes

Since no one but you can know what's best for you, government control can't make your life better.

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.

Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit myself to - what is best for me.

I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I've got.

A man has to construct, invent, his freedom.

There are things one must do for oneself.

In one sense I feel that my book is a one-woman argument against determinism.

I mean, I think we're put here on earth to make your own destiny, to begin with. I don't think there's anything you can do this way or that way to change anything.

Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.

Philosophically I am, or at least have been, a follower of Sartre. I am very interested in the choices we make, or don't make, in life-defining matters. That moment of 'angst' and its consequences can be such a cruel thing.

Your life is yours to live, no matter how you choose to live it. When you do not think about how you intend to live it, it lives you. When you occupy it, step into it consciously, you live it.

I have the freedom to take chances, to say no. I have the freedom to be who I really want to be, rather than have to conform to this or that just to stay alive.

I am responsible for me. I can kind of take care of what I need to do and should do what I like to do.

We are all the writer-director-star-producer of our own life. We see life through our own eyes.

I really do see that anywhere I am, whether it's doing interviews a hundred in a row, that every situation I'm in, I'm at choice in the matter.

Allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose.

It does not follow that the meaning must be given from above; that life and suffering must come neatly labeled; that nothing is worth while if the world is not governed by a purpose.

Whatever I do, it's my business. It's not my job to parent America.

You can be bound by physical things, as I am by certain sicknesses, but nevertheless you can still be free to recognize that all initiatives really come from yourself if you don't depend upon structures of government or structures of any kind.

I think it's very important that you make your own decision about what you are. Therefore you're responsible for your actions, so you don't blame other people.

Humanism is the creed of those who believe that in the circle of enwrapping mystery, men's fates are in their own hands—a faith that for modern man is becoming the only possible faith.

Ultimately the person, even the child, must choose for himself.

Man must assume responsibility for the direction of his life and destiny.

Every man must have freedom, must have the scope to form, test, and act upon his own choices, for any sort of development of his own personality to take place. He must, in short, be free in order that he may be fully human.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.