Autonomy Loss Quotes

Fame changed my life completely because, for a while, I was in a position to choose what I did. I miss that aspect. But I always felt uncomfortable with it.

Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.

My objection to war was not that I had to kill somebody or be killed senselessly, that hardly mattered. What I objected to was to be denied the right to sit in a small room and starve and drink cheap wine and go crazy in my own way and at my own leisure.

I needed to be sexier. I needed to be more hip. I needed to be more edgy and this and that. 'No, don't write that kind of song, write this type of song. No, don't work with that producer, work with this producer. No, don't wear those clothes, wear these clothes.' And I didn't want to be a puppet, you know?

I'd never worked for anyone else until I got to the NFL, and this will be my last time working for someone else.

This is how I feel about everything that's out of your control: once you make a record, it's not yours anymore. There's nothing you can do. It's the way I feel about political movements - both of those things grow on their own.

I want everybody to think alike. I think everybody should be a machine.

My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.

When personal judgment is inoperative (or forbidden), men's first concern is not how to choose, but how to justify their choice

The industry now wants to be in charge of everything.

Do as you like with me. I'm your parcel. I have only our address on me. Open me, or readdress me.

Of course, a culture as manically and massively materialistic as ours creates materialistic behavior in its people, especially in those people who've been subjected to nothing but the destruction of imagination that this culture calls education, the destruction of autonomy it calls work, and the destruction of activity it calls entertainment.

I hated to be treated as a child. I thought it was the worst situation.

Soon you won't even have the choice to live or die as you wish!

If you lend your consciousness to someone else, you're a robot.

Once you feel like you're being dictated by other people's expectations, it usually backfires.

You might be like, 'I want really big hits.' But when you get really big hits, and your label is making $150 million, they are people who are now interested in what you do. They are going to begin to tell you what to do, and so you become important. So your creative freedom - you're not going to have that again.

The radios are going to dictate. That's another fight. That's another story there. I wish they just let it be.

To regard human beings as tools - as instruments - for the use of other human beings is not only unscientific but it is repugnant, stupid and short sighted. Tools are made by man but have not the autonomy of their maker - they have not man's time-binding capacity for initiation, for self-direction, and self-improvement.

Anyone fighting for freedom does not want to totally lose their freedom.

The condition of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but most wretched is the condition of those who labor at preoccupations that are not even their own, who regulate their sleep by that of another, their walk by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the freest things in the world-loving and hating. If these wish to know how short their life is, let them reflect how small a part of it is their own.

If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich man--not to make any invidious comparison--is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.... Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet.

Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation between master and slave.

In the transfer society, the general public is not only poorer but also less contented, less autonomous, more rancorous, and more politicized. Individuals take part less often in voluntary community activities and more often in belligerent political contests. Genuine communities cannot breathe in the poisonous atmosphere of redistributional politics.

There's a fine line between something saving you time and replacing a bit of you that could be useful. I've certainly become more and more aware of that. All it takes is for my phone to run out of battery and I need to find a place and I suddenly realise I have no sense of direction anymore because I'm so used to using it for that.