Individual Empowerment Quotes

Our nation was built and civilized by men and women who used guns in self-defense and in pursuit of peace. One wonders indeed, if the rising crime rate, isn't due as much as anything to the criminal's instinctive knowledge that the average victim no longer has means of self-protection.

Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group - whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called 'the common good'.

You can't save everybody. In fact, there are days when I think you can't save anyone. Each person has to save himself first, then you can move in and help. I have found this philosophy does not work during a gun battle, or a knife fight either. Outside of that it works just fine.

No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.

Only changed people can change the world. Start with yourself.

No one of us can survive in the world of today, much less what it will become, without personal inspiration.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

It is your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.

It is not the State that orders us; but it is we who order the State!

Trust has shifted from institutions to individuals.

I believe the highest aspiration of man should be individual freedom and the development of the individual.

It is necessary that one be a light to oneself in a world that is becoming utterly dark.

For traditional societies … the collective, the group, is more important than the individual, and empowering the individual is equated with dividing the society.

I train myself. I don't have trainers who want hundreds of thousands of dollars to train me. I hire who I want to put the grease on my face, to rub my neck and rub my back, to take my mouthpiece out and rinse it off and put the mouthpiece back in. And then I go about my business. And if they want to say something, they can give me little reminders. All you need are reminders. You don't need 'big-time' trainers.

Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament.

Independent development can be a virus that can infect others.

I'm the one who changes the world if I can follow what I think should and shouldn't be lived in this world.

I learned never to say, 'That's too tight.' If a woman puts it on and feels good about herself, then it's for her.

It was scary. But it was so liberating. I thought, This is not predetermined - I get to choose. There are some days where I have to choose five times in a day. I had to make a choice when you called and the phone rang, whether I'm going to show up and be me, or whether I'm going to say what I think I'm supposed to say and get off the phone.

There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it's now okay to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly until it's simply the way things are.

I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.

So long as a man is faithful to himself, everything is in his favor, government, society, the very sun, moon, and stars.

Nobody will tell me what I can or I cannot do.

With realization of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build a better world.

The goal of the human soul is conquest, perfection, security, superiority.