Ella Baker Quotes

It's your life - but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else . . . you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

I live my life not to please my pastor or my church or fellow Christians. I live my life according to my own convictions and morals and core values and principles, and a lot of times, that's not going to add up to other Christians.

For a man to act himself, he must be perfectly free; otherwise he is in danger of losing all sense of responsibility or of self- respect.

I will be my own kind of senator using my own best judgment and my own experience.

Live your own life; practice what you preach.

My lesson would be to not sell yourself to anybody else and stay true to yourself.

I don't have to do something I'm not comfortable with just to be on television.

Playing nice isn't really something that's in my vocabulary. I just do what I think is right.

Feminism was recognized by the average man as a conflict in which it was impossible for a man, as a chivalrous gentleman, as a respecter of the rights of little nations (like little Belgium), as a highly evolved citizen of a highly civilized community, to refuse the claim of this better half to self-determination.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

There's an individual feminism, if you will, that you make your own choices.

I see a lot of young female performers who do not call themselves feminist, but would certainly believe in their own right to self-determination, and wouldn't want anybody to stop them from becoming themselves. They just refuse to recognize the relationship between their lives and those of other women, or feel any solidarity there.

If I could not be persuaded into doing what I thought wrong, I never will be tricked into it.

I really like individualism based on truth.

Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self- sovereignty.

I think I'm in control of what I do and what I've done. I think that's the ultimate feminine power. Do as you want.

I realized that what was most important to me was following my own path, and not the one laid down for me by others.

I think, there are people for whom freedom is a bigger, more important thing than stability.

You have to focus on what's important to you and go for it. But don't stab people in the back. It poisons your whole life if you're like that.

Let all your views in life be directed to a solid, however moderate, independence; without it no man can be happy, nor even honest.

All my battles were with male egos. I’m just looking for equality, not to dominate. But I want to be able to control my vision.

As women began to challenge their own internalized views of a woman's proper place, their desire and demand for equal status and free choice began to grow exponentially.

Your most important asset is the conscious control of your own life.

I consider myself to be a feminist. My hope and goal is that I'm going to raise two very strong independent women that won't need anybody, unless they chose that. I want them to be mistresses of their own destiny. But I don't judge people on the other end of that spectrum either.