Independence

"For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose."

"Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth."

"For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom."

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be."

"You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence"

"Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then."

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."

"I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another."

"I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me."

"It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind."

"If you truly want to be respected by people you love, you must prove to them that you can survive without them."