William Godwin Quotes

I believe very firmly in the principle of free agency - people making their own decisions and doing what they think is right.

I think people do have their own minds.

The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it.

You can't let anybody else tell you what your choices are. Sometimes they won't give you the right choice.

I just do what I want to do without hurting other people and you know, I wish other people would do the same.

I very much want to do things my way, and I want to control the result.

Perhaps the majority of human beings never think of standing by themselves, and choosing their own employments, till the sentence has been regularly promulgated to them, 'It is time for you to take care of yourself.'

He is free who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide at each step, the course of his life, and who lives in a society which does not block the exercise of that power.

Our thoughts and our conduct are our own.

Autonomy is the whole thing; it's what unhappy people are missing. They have given the power to run their lives to other people.

Only in those moments when I exercise my freedom am I fully myself.

I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.

I like a world where each of us has the tools to be able to make able to make our own decisions.

The power of choice. You have it. But you forfeit it when you imagine that you can choose for others. You can't. But you can choose for yourself.

You cannot live your life to please others. The choice must be yours.

Our whole evolution has reached a stage where nearly every man is either ruler or ruled; sometimes he is both. By this the attitude of dependence has been greatly strengthened, for a truly free man does not like to play the part of either the ruler or the ruled. He is, above all, concerned with making his inner values and personal powers effective in a way as to permit him to use his own judgment in all affairs and to be independent in action.

Forbid a man to think for himself or to act for himself and you may add the joy of piracy and the zest of smuggling to his life.

I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations and you're not in this world to live up to mine.

I never concerned myself with other people's decisions.

You have to make your own decisions. That's what the freedom in America is all about.

Advice to intellectuals: let no-one represent you.

Up to now I've done everything I've wanted to do the way I wanted to do myself.

I don't substitute anybody else's judgment for my own.

I will offer a choice, not an echo.

When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.