Walker Percy Quotes

The libertarian worship of individual freedom, and contempt for social convention, comes easiest to people who have never really had to grow up.

You're so square, baby, I don't care.

If other people do not understand our behavior-so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being 'asocial' or 'irrational' in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them.

It would be very hard for me to do things somebody else's way.

I do things my way and I pay a high price.

I know I'm vulgar, but would you have me any other way?

Punk is the way of those who are unable to express themselves, but they aren't dangerous; at worst, they may kill their audience.

You ain't got but one life. You ought to live it the way you want.

There were more ways to live than the ones given by one's superiors

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them.

I was not born to be forced.

Freedom is the basic concept and construct of life everywhere, because freedom is the basic nature of God. All systems which reduce, restrict, impinge upon or eliminate freedom in any way are systems which work against life itself.

When I need to wipe my face, I use the back of my hand, And I like to take up space just because I can, And I use my dress to wipe up my drink. I care less and less what people think.

In my own way, I was a rebellious kid.

I tried to picture her in a class, any class, anywhere on campus, and failed miserably. I pictured her frolicking in a forest glade around some guy she'd just sacrificed to a heathen god. That image worked way better.

If you are really Master of your Fate, it shouldn't make any difference to you whether Cleopatra or the Bearded Lady is your mate.

A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly; but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon.

In all kinds of ways there are different freedoms that effect our lives and you can assess what our lives are like by looking at the various freedoms that we have.

Women are born free, and I think that they should stay that way.

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

Our instinct may be to see the impossibility of tracking everything down as frustrating, dispiriting, perhaps even appalling, but it can just as well be viewed as almost unbearably exciting. We live on a planet that has a more or less infinite capacity to surprise. What reasoning person could possibly want it any other way?

But now that she had achieved knighthood, and thought and acted as she wanted and decided, for one has to act in this way in order to save this world, she neither noticed nor cared that all the people around her thought she was insane.

I don't feel in any way obligated to remain current with the culture. I feel no social obligation whatsoever. I trust my morality in the narrow path I trek through the world as I work.

It is curious to be treated by the old-fashioned people as a criminal because my thoughts and ways are beyond them.

I want to be able to do whatever I feel like doing and not worry about anything. Even when I was a kid, the only contemporary artist I listened to was Cyndi Lauper.