Richard Bach Quotes

I must be allowed to be as I am.

At which point should we let go and do what we want to do, and when should we submit to rules? Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.

People have to learn who they are - you can't have somebody else telling you who you are.

You cannot belong to anyone else, until you belong to yourself.

L.A. is so isolated and unhip in a way; it gives you room to figure out who you are and explore more personal stuff.

I know that many people kill off their real personality just to fit into this society, but why do we have to compromise? I never understood that. I decided to try to be myself and to live by my own values rather than those of others.

A product is most easily sold when it has an identity. So they wrap you all up and put a label on you. And then that's what you have to be. But what I'm looking for is the opportunity to explore what I can do, probing the limits, learning.

I have a natural tendency to resist conformity.

It's interesting to be at once an insider and outsider. It's a way of learning how to find your way freely without the need of conforming or belonging.

If you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours.

For a long time, I consciously tried to be a good person for others. Not anymore. Caring about other people keeps me in line, but I've decided to just be myself.

Identity is not negotiable. An identity you have achieved by agreement is always a prison.

Never follow anyone else's path, unless you're in the woods and you're lost.

Father, I am from a different egg than your other children. Think of me as a duckling raised by hens. I am not a domestic bird destined to spend his life in a chicken coop. the water that scares you rejuvenates me. For unlike you I can swim, and swim I shall. The ocean is my homeland. If you are with me, come to the ocean. If not, stop interfering with me and go back to the chicken coop.

Try to find your individuality, your integrity, and make the effort of not compromising. Because the more you compromise, the less you are an individual. You are only a cog in the wheel, just a part in the vast mechanism, just a small part of the mob - not an individual in your own beauty, in your own right. I am absolutely against compromise. Death is far more beautiful than a life of compromise.

Every child is simple, just a clean slate. Then the parents start writing on his slate - what he has to become. Then the teachers, the priests, the leaders - they all go on emphasizing that you have to become somebody; otherwise, you have wasted your life. Just the opposite is the case. You are a being. You need not become anybody else. That is the meaning of simplicity: remaining at ease with one's being, and not going on any track of becoming - which is unending.

NORA: I must stand on my own two feet if I'm to get to know myself and the world outside. That's why I can't stay here with you any longer.

Kept looking for something to be in with. Follow someone's blueprint. But you have to be on your own.

If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by who we are we can all be freer. And this is what HeforShe is about. It’s about freedom.

Life consists in learning to live on one's own, spontaneous, freewheeling: to do this one must recognize what is one's own-be familiar and at home with oneself. This means basically learning who one is, and learning what one has to offer to the contemporary world, and then learning how to make that offering valid.

I pay for what I call eccentricity and my will to evolve.

I realized I was an attractive older woman who never wanted to settle down.

Really rejoice in being yourself. Have your own drumbeat.

I always tried so hard to fit in, and then I figured out that I didn't want to fit.

He who integrates is lost.