Self Reliance quotes
74 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land."
"What is work? Work is struggle. There are difficulties and problems in those places for us to overcome and solve. We go there to work and struggle to overcome these difficulties. A good comrade is one who is more eager to go where the difficulties are greater."
"You can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing."
"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession."
"The best help that benevolence and philanthropy can give is that which induces everybody to help himself."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside self reliance — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it."
"I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing."
"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."
"You can't get old without living."
"It's a sign of your own worth sometimes if you are hated by the right people."
"There is always a better way."
"There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees."
"Success is predictable."
"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles."
"I have tried 99 times and have failed, but on the 100th time came success."
"Don't limit your challenges; challenge your limits. Each day we must strive for constant and never ending improvement."
"The comrades throughout the Party must take all this fully into account and be prepared to overcome all difficulties with an indomitable will and in a planned way. The reactionary forces and we both have difficulties. But the difficulties of the reactionary forces are insurmountable because they are forces on the verge of death and have no future. Our difficulties can be overcome because we are new and rising forces and have a bright future."
"These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world."
"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members."
"If it is true that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, isn't it also true a society is only as healthy as its sickest citizen and only as wealthy as its most deprived?"
"The time will come that gold will hold no comparison in value to a bushel of wheat."
"Chance never helps those who do not help themselves."
"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."
"I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions."
"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages"
