56 Self-Reliance Quotes

In a world where dependence on external validation and support often shapes our decisions and mindsets, the concept of self-reliance stands as a powerful antidote. Embracing self-reliance isn't about isolation; it's about cultivating inner strength, confidence, and the ability to trust oneself. This collection of the top 56 self-reliance quotes is designed to inspire and empower you on your journey towards greater autonomy and self-assuredness. These quotes, from some of history's most insightful thinkers and leaders, will remind you of the inherent strength that lies within and encourage you to harness it in your daily life. Dive into this curated selection and let the wisdom of the ages guide you toward a more self-reliant and fulfilling existence.

1. “The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.” - Carlos Castaneda

2. “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.” - Maya Angelou

3. “When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everyone will respect you.” - Lao Tzu

4. “Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.” - Mae West

5. “To find yourself, think for yourself.” - Socrates

6. “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.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

7. “I don't care what is written," Meyer Landsman says. "I don't care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son's throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don't care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my hat. It's in my ex-wife's tote bag.” - Michael Chabon

8. “You are constantly invited to be what you are.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

9. “Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got.” - Janis Joplin

10. “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.” - Walt Whitman

11. “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” - Ralph Waldo Emmerson

12. “Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.” - Henry David Thoreau

13. “I think the girl who is able to earn her own living and pay her own way should be as happy as anybody on earth. The sense of independence and security is very sweet.” - Susan B. Anthony

14. “A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and, above all, responsible liberty for every individual that we will become that shining city on a hill.” - Ronald Reagan

15. “Oh the places you'll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all.” - Dr. Seuss

16. “Only a weak person needed someone else around all the time.” - Sarah Dessen

17. “You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence” - Abraham Lincoln

18. “For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose.” - Marcus Aurelius

19. “I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is that there is no truth... No truth behind all truths is what I and this church preach! Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got.” - Flannery O'Connor

20. “* Be ready for rainy-day emergencies * Avoid excessive debt; be content with what we have * Use the resources of the earth wisely; don´t be wasteful * Prepare for the future by making spending and savings plans * Keep a family or personal budget * Teach children wise spending habits and help them save for the future * Obtain an education or vocational training * Find gainful employmentAs we become self-reliant, we will be prepared to face challenges with confidence and peace of mind.” - Robert D. Hales

21. “You can't trust other people. If it's important, you have to do it yourself.” - Neil Gaiman

22. “The proverb warns that, 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.” - Thomas Stephen Szasz

23. “You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.” - Abraham Lincoln

24. “She might be without country, without nation, but inside her there was still a being that could exist and be free, that could simply say I am without adding a this, or a that, without saying I am Indian, Guyanese, English, or anything else in the world.” - Sharon Maas

25. “Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it's not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit, full of books and films you've been to. I'm not afraid of being homesick and having no language to live in. I don't have to be like anyone else. I'm walking on the wall and nobody can stop me.” - Hugo Hamilton

26. “Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing.” - Eve Ensler

27. “It was one thing to make a mistake; it was another thing to keep making it. I knew what happened when you let yourself get close to someone, when you started to believe they loved you: you'd be disappointed. Depend on someone, and you might as well admit you're going to be crushed, because when you really needed them, they wouldn't be there. Either that, or you'd confide in them and you added to their problems. All you ever really had was yourself, and that sort of sucked if you were less than reliable.” - Jodi Picoult

28. “I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to, and I've made enough money to support myself, and ain't afraid of being alone.” - Katharine Hepburn

29. “Sure, it sucked to be lost, but I'd long ago realized I preferred it to depending on anyone else to get me where I needed to go. That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened- good, bad, or anywhere in between- it was always, if nothing else, all your own.” - Sarah Dessen

30. “You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore...But let there be spaces in your togetherness...Love one another, but make not a bond of love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not of the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.” - Kahlil Gibran

31. “I'd rather die my way than live yours.” - Lauren Oliver

32. “The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” - Michel de Montaigne

33. “If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married.” - Elizabeth I

34. “Associate with noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty. But learn to be happy alone. Rely upon your own energies, and so not wait for, or depend on other people.” - Thomas Davidson

35. “Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

36. “It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.” - Epicurus

37. “Here must thou be, O man,Strength to thyself — no helper hast thou here —Here keepest thou thy individual state:No other can divide with thee this work,No secondary hand can interveneTo fashion this ability. 'Tis thine,The prime and vital principle is thineIn the recesses of thy nature, farFrom any reach of outward fellowship,Else 'tis not thine at all.” - William Wordsworth

38. “you don't have to worry about burning bridges, if you're building your own” - Kerry E. Wagner

39. “Trust your instincts, and make judgements on what your heart tells you. The heart will not betray you.” - David Gemmell

40. “You can't hang around waiting for somebody else to pull your strings. Destiny's what you make of it. You have to face whatever life throws at you. And if it throws more than you'd like, more than you think you can handle? Well then you just have to find the heroism within yourself and play out the hand you've been dealt. The universe never sets a challenge that can't be met. You just need to believe in yourself in order to find the strength to face it.” - Darren Shan

41. “You think intelligence and grit can succeed by themselves, but I'm telling you that's a pretty illusion.” - Nancy Kress

42. “We are so accustomed to the comforts of "I cannot", "I do not want to" and "it is too difficult" that we forget to realize when we stop doing things for ourselves and expect others to dance around us, we are not achieving greatness. We have made ourselves weak.” - Pandora Poikilos

43. “Life doesn't run away from nobody. Life runs at people.” - Joe Frazier

44. “In yourself right now is all the place you've got.” - Flannery O'Connor

45. “Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-contained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no colour from the outer world.” - Mary Elizabeth Braddon

46. “There are some who want to get married and others who don't. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead.” - Greta Garbo

47. “I'll walk where my own nature would be leading. It vexes me to choose another guide.” - Charlotte Brontë

48. “She was looking for something I could never give her." Again his dark eyes bored into Julia's mind. "You have something of the same about you, young woman. Take my advice: Don't think you will find it in another person. You won't. It's not there. You must find it in yourself.” - Iain Pears

49. “Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day.” - Sophocles

50. “Jerry-5486: "The most apparent thing that I noticed was how most of the people in this study derive their sense of identity and well-being from their immediate surroundings rather than from within themselves, and that's why they broke down—just couldn't stand the pressure—they had nothing within them to hold up against all of this.” - Philip G. Zimbardo

51. “Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to nourish my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, - but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will strongly believe before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. --- But so you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

52. “She must protect herself. There would be no one to do it for her. A plan started to prick up its ears inside her, slowly, but getting stronger.” - Catherynne M. Valente

53. “If you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe - to see you, and to give a fuck - you've already blown it.” - Neal Stephenson

54. “Of all the dangerous ideas that health officials could have embraced while trying to understand why we get fat, they would have been hard-pressed to find one ultimately more damaging than calories-in/calories-out. That it reinforces what appears to be so obvious - obesity as the penalty for gluttony and sloth - is what makes it so alluring. But it's misleading and misconceived on so many levels that it's hard to imagine how it survived unscathed and virtually unchallenged for the last fifty years. It has done incalculable harm. Not only is this thinking at least partly responsible for the ever-growing numbers of obese and overweight in the world - while directing attention away from the real reasons we get fat - but it has served to reinforce the perception that those who get fat have no one to blame but themselves. That eating less invariably fails as a cure for obesity is rarely perceived as the single most important reason to make us question our assumptions, as Hilde Bruch suggested half a century ago. Rather, it is taken as still more evidence that the overweight and obese are incapable of following a diet and eating in moderation. And it put the blame for their physical condition squarely on their behavior, which couldn't be further from the truth.” - Gary Taubes

55. “Confidence, is like a belt worn around the waist. Wear it too tight, you come off cocky and arrogant, wear it too loose, you come off timid and a walk over, but wear it fit and snug, it will uphold you in every step of the way.” - Anthony Liccione

56. “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. 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... In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried” - Ralph Waldo Emerson