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Independence is not relying on another

• Independent: Capable of thinking or acting for oneself.  Oxford Dictionary
• Independent: Not depending on something else for strength or effectiveness; free-standing.  Oxford Dictionary
• Independent: Not influenced or controlled in any way by other people, events, or things. Dictionary.com
• Independent: Not relying on another or others for aid or support. Dictionary.com
• Independent: not looking to others for one’s opinions or for guidance in conduct.  Merriam Webster
• Interdependence,  Autonomy,  Responsibility

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Independence is depending on forces inside yourself

• The more you depend on forces outside yourself, the more you are dominated by them. Harold Sherman
• There is no dependence that can be sure but a dependence upon one’s self. John Gay

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A certain amount of independence is essential to succeed in life …

• You have to do it yourself, no one else will do it for you. You must work out your own salvation. Charles E. Popplestone
• No one can be great, or good, or happy except through the inward efforts of themselves. Frederick William Robertson
• Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom and being one’s own person is its ultimate reward. Patricia Sampson
• The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be self-sufficient. Michel de Montaigne
• The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone. Henrik Ibsen
• If it is to be, it is up to me. William H. Johnsen
• Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
• The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself. Michel de Montaigne

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… for the greatest help you can rely on is the help you give yourself

• God helps them that help themselves. Proverb
• God loves to help him who strives to help himself. Aeschylus
• No man who is not willing to help himself has any right to apply to his friends, or to the gods. Demosthenes
• Help yourself, and Heaven will help you. Jean De La Fontaine
• Chance never helps those who do not help themselves. Sophocles
• The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your own arm.

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Make your happiness independent of external factors or people

• Happiness never comes from the outside. Only when you are not depending on anything from the outside for your happiness are you totally independent. Sri Swami Satchidananda
• 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
• Happiness

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Be independent of the opinions and expectations of others

• I am totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others. Deepak Chopra
• If you’re really spiritual, then you should be totally independent of the good and the bad opinions of the world…you should have faith in yourself. Deepak Chopra
• Quit putting yourself in a little box by trying to live consistently with your past and explaining every little action you take. BE YOU. Fully. In this moment. Independent of what others may or may not ‘expect’ from you. Brian Johnson
• Self-actualised people are independent of the good opinion of others. Wayne Dyer
• They have become strong enough to be independent of the good opinion of other people, or even of their affection. The honors, the status, the rewards, the popularity, the prestige, and the love they can bestow must have become less important than self- development and inner growth. Abraham Maslow
• To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• When we are in touch with our universal Self, we relinquish the need for approval and control. This means that our actions are independent of the opinions of others and detached from expectations. We are motivated by our own powerful instincts and their evolutionary outcome, not because we have any expectations for payback. Deepak Chopra
• I equally dislike the favor of the public with the love of a woman — they are both a cloying treacle to the wings of independence. John Keats
• Opinion,  Expectation

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Let your mind be independent of its thoughts

• The mind should be kept independent of any thoughts that arise within it. If the mind depends on anything, it has no sure haven. Buddha

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Become independent by letting go of attachment

• Remember: no attachment should grow, no clinging should grow. They are all against your independence, your freedom, your individuality. Osho
• Letting go,  Non-attachment

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Become independent by choosing your own actions

• The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing. Thomas Aquinas
• Action

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Become independent by thinking for yourself

• Structures, how-to’s, dogma, principles…all disciplines and theories should be used to support your freedom and independent thinking. Curiosity is exponentially more powerful than playing by the rules. Danielle LaPorte
• Teaching for creativity aims to encourage self-confidence, independence of mind, and the capacity to think for oneself. Sir Ken Robinson
• To find yourself, think for yourself. Socrates
• Let me listen to myself and not to them. Gertrude Stein
• Independent inquiry is needed in your search for truth, not dependence on anyone else’s view or a mere book. Bruce Lee
• The essence of independence has been to think and act according to standards from within, not without: to follow one’s own path, not that of the crowd. Nicholas Tharcher
• Conformity

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Independence is living within your needs and not being drowned in debt

• There is no dignity quite so impressive and no independence quite so important as living within your means. Calvin Coolidge
• One of the advantages of possessing money is that it facilitates one’s independence and mental attitude. The man head over heels in debt is more slave than independent. C. Forbes
• Frugality

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Wealth brings a certain level of independence …

• The starting point of financial independence is the development of what Napoleon Hill called a prosperity consciousness. You must become a financial success in your thinking long before you can become rich in your reality. Brian Tracy
• Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent. Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort
• It’s easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing — that’s the Lord’s test. Mahalia Jackson
• True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. Franklin D. Roosevelt
• It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. Somerset Maugham
• Wealth

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… but never entirely

• If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. Henry Ford

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Independence is important for a healthy relationship …

• You must first have a good relationship with yourself before you can have a good relationship with others. You have to feel worthwhile and acceptable in your own eyes. The more independent you are, the better you’ll be able to connect and relate with others. Gary Emery
• We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence. Fred Rogers
• An intimate relationship does not banish loneliness. Only when we are comfortable with who we are can we truly function independently in a healthy way, can we truly function within a relationship. Two halves do not make a whole when it comes to a healthy relationship: it takes two wholes. Patricia Fry
• Principles for healthy relationships

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… if balanced with intimacy

• Perhaps my problem in marriage-and it is the problem of many women-was to want both intimacy and independence. It is a difficult line to walk, yet both needs are important to a marriage. Hedy Lamarr
• Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone. Deborah Tannen
• Marriage is that relation between man and woman in which the independence is equal, the dependence mutual, and the obligation reciprocal. Louis K. Anspacher
• Intimacy,  Connection

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Parenthood is about making your children independent

• A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when his absolute rule shall cease. Elizabeth Gaskell
• The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence. Denis Waitley
• The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them. Frank Clark
• Parenting

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To manage yourself, develop the power of your independent will

• I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will. Charlotte Brontë
• Discipline provides a constancy which is independent of what kind of day you had yesterday and what kind of day you anticipate today. Jon Kabat-Zinn
• Between stimulus and response, you have the freedom to choose your response based on self-awareness, your imagination, your conscience and your independent will. Stephen Covey
• Every human has four endowments- self-awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change. Stephen Covey
• In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment – independent will – that really makes effective self- management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.  Stephen Covey
• Real courage is a mental skill, not an emotional one. Neurologically it means using the thinking neocortex part of your brain to override the emotional limbic impulses. In other words, you use your human intelligence, logic, and independent will to overcome the limitations you’ve inherited as an emotional mammal. Steve Pavlina
• Will power,  Self-control

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Independence is a myth for the truth is we all rely on each other to a certain extent

• As Walker relates, His Holiness was talking about the myth of independence. If you are so independent, he asked, who grows your food? Who sews your clothes, builds your house, makes sure that water comes out of your showerhead? How were you even born? The fact is, he said, we have not done one single thing alone, without the help of a small army of others, and yet we walk around talking about the necessity and supremacy of independence. It’s completely irrational. Jean Twenge & Keith Campbell
• Talking about independence makes me wonder, who is truly independent in this world? A farmer who grows food is dependent on a baker, a barber, a doctor, and so on. A doctor is dependent on other people of different professions in order to survive. I am dependent and will be dependent on certain caregivers and therapists. Those caregivers and therapists need people like me to earn their bread and butter and draw their salaries. So no one is doing any favors when choosing whatever his means of livelihood is. Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay
• Everything, including all people, exists only through relationships with other people or things. Nothing exists in isolation or absolute independence.  No person, or thing can arise of, for, or by its own accord.  Everything is interdependent.  Taro Gold
• Independence is a political concept, not a biological concept. Margaret Wheatley
• No employer today is independent of those about him. He cannot succeed alone, no matter how great his ability or capital. Business today is more than ever a question of cooperation. Orison Swett Marden
• The achievement of maturity, psychologically speaking, might be said to be the realization and acceptance that we simply cannot live independently from the world, and so we must live within it, with whatever compromises that might entail. Paul Murray
• We know from science that nothing in the universe exists as an isolated or independent entity. Margaret J. Wheatley
• There is no one subsists by himself alone. Owen Felltham
• Independence? That’s middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth. George Bernard Shaw
• We are what we are because of the hard work, insights and achievements of countless others. Karen Armstrong
• There is no such thing as a “self-made” man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success. George Matthew Adams

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The truth is we are not independent but interdependent

• Even as people take pride in their national independence, we know we are becoming more and more interdependent. Bill Clinton
• Let’s face it. In most of life we really are interdependent. We need each other. Staunch independence is an illusion, but heavy dependence isn’t healthy, either. The only position of long-term strength is interdependence: win/win. Greg Anderson
• I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent. Martin Luther King, Jr
• I have an interesting perspective on depending on others. I think it gives people a chance to serve. And I’m not so much big on independence, as I am on interdependence. I’m not talking about co-dependency, I’m talking about giving people the opportunity to practice love with its sleeves rolled up. Joni Eareckson Tada
• Interdependence

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Evolution is a process from dependence toward independence, ultimately resulting in interdependence

• Effective interdependence can only be built on a foundation of true independence. Stephen Covey
• In the progress of personality, first comes a declaration of independence, then a recognition of interdependence. Henry Van Dyke
• Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. Stephen Covey
• One human being, one village, one city, or even one country can no longer live entirely on its own. Competitiveness – the desire to be the first, the best, the foremost, and only one – has simply become outdated as a “value.” This desire may have been useful in the past.  The concept of evolution describes a process from dependence toward independence, ultimately resulting in interdependence.  Frank Petter
• Evolution

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Interdependence is a paradigm of “we” and promotes co-operation and collaboration

• Interdependence is the paradigm of “we”—we can do it; we can combine our talents and abilities to create something greater together. Despite independence being the avowed goal of many people and social movements, interdependence is a far more effective and advanced concept. Stephen Covey
• Dependent people need others to get what they want. Independent people can get what they want through their own efforts. Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success. Stephen Covey
• The human condition is that we are individuals in relationship, and there are tensions between individuality and relatedness. A humanist spirituality is not one of complete dependence, nor of complete independence — neither condition can be defended as primary. Rather, a humanist spirituality is one of interdependence. Jone Johnson Lewis
• Cooperation,  Collaboration

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Independence and solitude

• Solitude is independence. Hermann Hesse
• 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
• The price for independence is often isolation and solitude. Steve Schmidt
• Solitude

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Independence and doing what is right

• Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence. David Ben-Gurion
• True independence and freedom can only exist in doing what’s right. Brigham Young
• Right action

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Independence and women

• I have urged on woman independence of man, not that I do not think the sexes mutually needed by one another, but because in woman this fact has led to an excessive devotion, which has cooled love, degraded marriage and prevented it her sex from being what it should be to itself or the other. I wish woman to live, first for God’s sake. Then she will not take what is not fit for her from a sense of weakness and poverty. Then if she finds what she needs in man embodied, she will know how to love and be worthy of being loved. Margaret Fuller
• I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves. Mary Wollstonecraft
• It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men. Mary Wollstonecraft
• 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
• Most men claim to desire driven, independent and confident women. Yet when confronted with such a creature reverence often evolves into resent. For just like women, men need to be needed. Tiffany Madison

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• I’m a modern, intelligent, independent-type woman. In other words, a girl who can’t get a man. Shelley Winters
• When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment. Warren Farrell
• Divorce is a declaration of independence with only two signers. Gerald F. Lieberman
• Dependent: Reliant upon another’s generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears. Ambrose Bierce
• Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle- aged, and the mutual dependence of the old. John Ciardi
• To err is dysfunctional; to forgive co-dependent. Berton Averre

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