Self-Reliance Quotes

I have no intention of being a potted plant, and just getting watered every so often.

When you introduce something new to a country, you want to do it right. Generally, that means you have to do it yourself.

Our time of trouble is because we have not paid good attention to the Messenger of God that He raised among us to warn us of the days that we are now witnessing; days when factories closed and long lines of persons looking for a job. He asked us to get up and do something for ourselves before we were forced to do it. Unfortunately we did not listen.

The best place to have some food set aside is within our homes, together with a little money in savings. The best welfare program is our own welfare program. Five or six cans of wheat in the home are better than a bushel in the welfare granary. ... We can begin with a one week's food supply and gradually build it to a month, and then to three months. I am speaking now of food to cover basic needs.

To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.

Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose.

Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.

Don't tell your problems to people: eighty percent don't care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

In tennis you're on an island. Of all the games men and women play, tennis is the closest to solitary confinement.

Every true thinker for himself is so far like a monarch; he is absolute, and recognizes nobody above him. His judgments, like the decrees of a monarch, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed directly from himself. He takes as little notice of authority as a monarch does of a command; nothing is valid unless he has himself authorized it. On the other hand, those of vulgar minds, who are swayed by all kinds of current opinions, authorities, and prejudices, are like the people which in silence obey the law and commands.

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.

After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us toward is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.

No one is coming to save you.

I've never been lonely. I've been in a room... I've felt suicidal, I've been depressed. I've felt awful ... awful beyond all , but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude.

Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may remain permanently hidden from him. One of the ways in which this hiddenness can express itself is through faith in a personal god.

There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.

I never was in the Nation of Islam... I mean, what I call myself is a natural Muslim, 'cause it's just me and God. You know, going to the mosque, the ritual and the tradition, it's just not in me to do. So I don't do it.

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

The world doesn't owe you anything. It was here first.

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 am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of their own imagination.

The more my people work, the less vices they will have