Estelle Quotes

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the 'leaders' must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

What does it mean to be an individual? What does it mean to flourish?

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

I refuse to be molded into some stereotypical ballplayer that has no interests, really, no life, no depth, no intelligence.

I never was a person who let people who have their ideas and their expectations of me dictate who I became.

As a southern woman, we often define ourselves by who we are with. But I wanted my life to be built differently.

Now that I'm older, I understand that it's up to the individual to decide who they are or what they are.

It's like you're a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say, 'I'm sorry, but this role isn't right for me'. And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing.

Imitation is very easy, and the whole culture and society depends on imitation. Everybody is telling you how to behave, and whatsoever they are teaching you is nothing but imitation. Religious people - the so-called religious people, the priests, the theologians - they are also teaching you, 'Be like Jesus, be like Buddha, be like Krishna.' Nobody ever tells you, 'Just be yourself' - nobody. Everybody is against you, it seems. Nobody allows you to be yourself, nobody gives you any freedom. You can be in this world, but you must imitate somebody.

It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits.

I wanted to use my possibility to be an individual, and I suppose I have, no?

People tell you the world looks a certain way. Parents tell you how to think. Schools tell you how to think. TV. Religion. And then at a certain point, if you're lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life.

In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew.

I try to not focus on what people expect from me.

My life choices are not supposed to be the gateway to somebody else's. That's my journey.

I don't want to be identified by any one role I do.

No One Is Alone by Stephen Sondheim is all about thinking for yourself and being your own person.

Nothing goes further toward a man's liberation than the act of surviving his need for character.

Don't let others define you. You define yourself.

To me, flying free is doing what I want to do, even if it's different from what everybody expects me to do. I'm flying free when I win the battle between me and the people who thought I should go down this road and I find my own road.

I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. I'm going to figure out what that is.

Each man must have his "I"; it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble.

All greatness of character is dependent on individuality.

Patterning your life around other's opinions is nothing more than slavery.

You make yourself be whatever the hell you want to be, at the end of the day.