Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

I want to live life on my own terms.

Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom.

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

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.

No man must encroach upon my province, nor I upon his. He may advise me, moderately and without pertinaciousness, but he must not expect to dictate to me. He may censure me freely and without reserve; but he should remember that I am to act by my deliberation and not his. I ought to exercise my talents for the benefit of others; but that exercise must be the fruit of my own conviction; no man must attempt to press me into the service.

Liberty is the result of free individual action,energy and independence.

I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.

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.

I don't have to be what you want me to be.

I started my career in parent education with the idea that we needed to let our kids go. I believed that parents were suffocating for their children. There was no room for individuality and personhood.

I'm free to leave... go wherever I please, do whatever I want; I believe everyone should live like that. Don't be dependent on anyone else - man, woman, child, or dog.

My highest value is not that the trains are on time. I want to be free.

I'll do what I like. It's my own life.

No one controlled Frank Sinatra or told him how to sing. No secret group of managers has been telling someone like Jay-Z what to do or how to look. And no one tells me what to do except me and the people who believe in me.

At the end of the day all I've ever asked for is to be allowed to succeed and fail on my own merits. Not based on what somebody else wants me to do or thinks I should do. Or, what they want me to say or what they think I should say.

Where the realm of freedom of thought and action begin, the determination of individuals according to generic laws ends.

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

I haven't even had a life I could call my own, and you're ready to slot me into the grand design. Well, I don't think I want to go. I want to be my own design.

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.

I was not born to be forced.

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 do things in my own way, but I've never felt any need to rebel.

You can not live your life just based on what everyone else thinks.

I've always been like nah, I'm going to have it my way, that way, when I look out that window at the end of the day, I can say I did it my way, whether it's on a higher level, or a level where I can just maintain, I can still say I did it my way.