Self Sufficient Quotes & Sayings

So you weren't in college."
"I wasn't, no." She takes another sip. "Your father was though. He was visiting for spring break. I mugged him."
"You what?"
"You have to understand I didn't make very much money, even with two jobs. It hardly even paid for my food. I couldn't fish, because-"
"You didn't want anyone to sense you in the water." Otherwise, she could have been pretty self-sufficient.
She nods. "So one day I see this group of cocky college students, spending money left and right. Pulling wads of cash out of their pockets to pay for small purchases, like ice cream." She rolls her eyes. "They were flashing it. They wanted people to know they were rich."
"Doesn't mean they wanted people to mug them," I mutter. — Anna Banks

The totally alive, totally conscious, and totally aware Universe takes care of itself completely. It is totally self-reliant and totally self- sufficient. it is perfect. — Chris Prentiss

Every parent's deepest wish is that their children are self sufficient, happy, and able to live a full life. — Peter Block

Only the self-sufficient stand alone - most people follow the crowd and imitate. — Bruce Lee

Seen through the eyes of faith, religion's future is secure. As long as there are human beings, there will be religion for the sufficient reason that the self is a theomorphic creature - one whose morphe (form) is theos - God encased within it. Having been created in the imago Dei, the image God, all human beings have a God-shaped vacuum built into their hearts. Since nature abhors a vacuum, people keep trying to fill the one inside them. — Huston Smith

The Grameen clinics prove that a medical system 'for the poor' can be almost entirely self-supporting, and we hope we can make it fully self sufficient so we can expand it across Bangladesh. — Muhammad Yunus

God is forbearing, gracious, and longsuffering, but he is also a God of holiness, wrath, and judgement.57 The wrath of God, unlike the love or holiness of God, should not be thought of as an intrinsic perfection of God; rather it is a function or expression of God's holiness against sin. Where there is no sin, there is no wrath, but there will always be love and holiness. Where God in his holiness confronts his image-bearers in their rebellion, there must be wrath, otherwise God is not the jealous and self-sufficient God he claims to be, and his holiness is impugned.58 — Peter J. Gentry

I'm a farmer now, and it's fantastic. My goal is to be totally self-sufficient and grow everything that I eat. There's something about earning your dinner that's cool. — Roseanne Barr

You're a soul made by God, made for God, and made to need God, which means you were not made to be self-sufficient. — John Ortberg

Where there is a sufficient social movement of self-reliant communities, there can be political change. There must be political change. — Jerry Brown

I was thinking that I should be content to kiss him until the break of day. Bertrand ran out of kisses too soon; desire made them superfluous in his eyes. They were only a stage on the road to pleasure, not something inexhaustible and self-sufficient, as Luc had revealed them to me. — Francoise Sagan

Ours is a society that has falsely assumed that contribution must mean giving to some specific cause rather than simply giving our best selves. Thus, too many people don't recognize the fact that simply being who they are is contributing significantly to the world. What if simply living your truth, being your best, and fully expressing your strengths, talents, and abilities at whatever you do were sufficient to contribute to the world? I say it is, and we must not overlook the fact that being our best ultimately inspires others and can and does indeed make an impact. — Brendon Burchard

In the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will direct your paths (Proverbs 3:5-6). We can choose to be self-sufficient or to rely on God. We can act on our own understanding regarding life's circumstances, or we can seek God's will in every situation. But only one choice assures us that God will direct our paths. — Francine Rivers

Kami'd always retold her fairy tales to make the fair maidens braver and more self-sufficient, but she had never had any real objection to the handsome prince. — Sarah Rees Brennan

For the rest, silence or good music, not much food, a lot of solitude, walks on the Heath, the time to think while others ... well, often fall apart. Not so bad, not so bad at all. Being queer and self-sufficient is the best present at this season. — Will Self

I am a complete, mature, self-sufficient being. — Frederick Winslow Taylor

People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident. To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. — Eric Hoffer

We cannot find Him unless we know we need Him. We forget this need when we take a self-sufficient pleasure in our own good works. The poor and helpless are the first to find Him, Who came to seek and to save that which was lost. — Thomas Merton

I like women who are self-sufficient. — Ty Pennington

I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me [I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ's sufficiency]. PHILIPPIANS 4:13 — Joyce Meyer

From 16 to 21 when I was self sufficient and working in factories. I packed batteries, boxes, and make-up with heroin addicts. I have to thank my mum for kicking me out at 16 and making me stand on my own two feet. — Jay Kay

LearnVest provides women with the necessary tools and resources to manage their personal finances; its core mission, to positively contribute to society through education and, ultimately, the promotion of self-sufficient and financially aware women. — Alexa Von Tobel

The morality of the church is anachronistic. Will it ever develop a moral insight and courage sufficient to cope with the real problems of modern society? If it does it will require generations of effort and not a few martyrdoms. We ministers maintain our pride and self-respect and our sense of importance only through a vast and inclusive ignorance. If we knew the world in which we live a little better we would perish in shame or be overcome by a sense of futility. — Reinhold Niebuhr

I have fruit trees. Cows for fresh milk, yoghurt. My own wheat. I'm basically self-sufficient. — Imran Khan

She'd arrived a self-sufficient city woman, and now she was covered in snow, sitting on a bench beside a crazy person, and she had a duck on her lap. Who was nuts now? — Louise Penny

Do not become self-sufficient . Self-sufficienc y is Satan's net where he catches men, like poor silly fish, and destroys them. Be not self-sufficient . The way to grow strong in Christ is to become weak in yourself. God pours no power into man's heart till man's power is all poured out. Live, then, daily, a life of dependence on the grace of God. — Charles Spurgeon

The basic unit of society is the family. No one comes into this world as a self-sufficient individual. We start out as the helpless child of a mother and a father, who put aside their own desires and interests to care for us. The family, in fact, is the first society - the first government, the first classroom, the first church. And the strength of the family is the strength of "we. — Rick Santorum

Thus the Stoics arrive at their main thesis. Virtue alone is admirable, virtue is absolutely self-sufficient; the good man needs no help from circumstances, neither sickness nor adversity can harm him; he is a king, a god among men. — Marcus Aurelius

Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it. — John Wyndham

long. Trade has always traveled and the world has always traded. Ours, though, is the era of extreme interdependence. Hardly any nation is now self-sufficient. In 2011, the United Kingdom shipped in half of its gas. The United States relies on ships to bring in two-thirds of its oil supplies. Every day, thirty-eight million tons of crude oil sets off by sea somewhere, although you may not notice it. As in Los Angeles, New York, and other port cities, London has moved its working docks out of the city, away from residents. Ships are bigger now and need deeper harbors, so they call at Newark or Tilbury or Felixstowe, not Liverpool or South Street. — Rose George

Neither the good nor the true is self-realizing, so it is not generally a sufficient explanation of why people believe that X that X is true, or of why people do Y that Y is good. — Raymond Geuss

Remember, for there to be any change in your life circumstances, you must change. You must improve yourself. You must develop your mind. You must change your company. If you want to fly like the eagles, then you have to make friends with the Eagles and not with chickens. You can't be in the company of chickens and hope to fly like the Eagles someday. Life does not work that way. — Bien Sufficient

Parochialism and provincialism are direct opposites. A provincial is always trying to live by other people's loves, but a parochial is self-sufficient. — Patrick Kavanagh

Many of my movies have strong female leads- brave, self-sufficient girls that don't think twice about fighting for what they believe with all their heart. They'll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a savior. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man. — Hayao Miyazaki

Happiness then, is found to be something perfect and self sufficient, being the end to which our actions are directed. — Aristotle.

The tree witches kept to themselves, a self-sufficient coven specializing in certain skills. The witches sang, played music, and danced at the gatherings around the fire, but nothing like what she'd experienced when the gargoyles transformed. After the first night, she was hooked.It was a risk to return but one she was willing to take. She'd ventured to that different world to hear the unique groups, especially to watch the guitarist with hair as black as midnight. — Lisa Carlisle

She was a passionate reader, and she thought that reading was one of the noblest efforts of all; in contrast, she found writing to be a great waste of time - a childish self-indulgence, even messier than finger painting - but she admired reading, which she believed was an unselfish activity that provided information and inspiration. She must have thought it a pity that some poor fools had to waste their lives writing in order for us to have sufficient reading material. (page 236) — John Irving

I want my girls to be strong and self-sufficient. — Angie Harmon

My main interest ... is the love of truth, whether pleasant or not. Truth is self-sufficient, and there is nothing to which it can be subordinated without loss. When truth is made subservient to anything else, however great (say religion), it becomes impure and sordid. — George Sarton

Given a sufficient level of perceived self-efficacy to take on threatening tasks, phobics perform them with varying amounts of fear arousal depending on the strength of their perceived self-efficacy — Albert Bandura

THEIR ADULT CHILDREN ARE ECONOMICALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT. — Thomas J. Stanley

There are books in rivulets and sermons in stones. You can gather lessons from everything. If a man does nothing whatsoever he recedes into his own self. God didn't do anything; He was one and wished to be many. He wished - and there were many. If He had not wished there to be many, it would have been sufficient-there would still be the wordless state. So to be in a wordless state is very supreme. — Kirpal Singh

When someone is self-sufficient, when he has all the answers to all the questions, it's a sign that God is not with him. Sobre el Cielo y la Tierra, 2010 — Julie Schwietert Collazo

I've always got the road. Stand-up makes you so autonomous and self-sufficient that it really helps with that part of show business. — Louis C.K.

Primordial. It is the source or agent of everything else. Prior to its emanating anything, it is whole, self-sufficient, perfect. The godhead thus symbolizes the unconscious before the emergence of the ego out of it.58 As a — C. G. Jung

Russia sees itself as a country that is self-sufficient. — Sergei Ivanov

The self-sufficient does not pray, the self-satisfied will not pray, the self-righteous cannot pray. No man is greater than his prayer life. — Leonard Ravenhill

I'm actually quite self-sufficient, so it might look as if there isn't room for anyone in my life. That isn't entirely the case. — Graham Norton

People who read books in public places are regarded with suspicion because they appear self-sufficient. When you seem self-sufficient, other people think that you think you're better than them, and they get resentful. — Jessica Zafra

Art is the distortion of an unendurable reality ... Art is correction, modification of a situation; art is communication, connection ... Art is social, self-sufficient, and total. — Jean Tinguely

people to become self-sufficient, — Dan Hudson

Take away a man's actual sense of manhood - which is conventionally based on the ability to work, to earn money, to be self-sufficient, to provide for children - and you've got to give them something else. And they did. — Fran Lebowitz

Yet weakness - or neediness - is a valuable asset in God's community. Jesus introduced a new era in which weakness is the new strength. Anything that reminds us that we are dependent on God and other people is a good thing. Otherwise, we trick ourselves into thinking that we are self-sufficient, and arrogance is sure to follow. We need help, and God has given us his Spirit and each other to provide it. — Edward T. Welch

I was a little cross.I ask pardon. If I do get up a little temper I have no sufficient time to keep it up. — Abraham Lincoln

The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power - that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He lived for himself. — Ayn Rand

Because he is; that is, because he is an infinitely glorious, good, wise, holy, powerful, righteous, self-subsisting , self-sufficient , and all-sufficient being; the fountain and author of all being and good; the first cause, last end, and sovereign Lord of all; therefore, he is to be worshipped: therefore, are we to admire, adore, and love him; to praise, to trust and to fear him. — John Owen

You 're too sufficient by yourself ... too inside yourself — Clifford Odets

In the early nineteenth century, the doctrine of self-sufficiency came to apply to families as well as individuals ... The familybecame a special protected place, the repository of tender, pure, and generous feelings (embodied by the mother) and a bulwark and bastion against the raw, competitive, aggressive, and selfish world of commerce (embodied by the father) ... In performing this protective task, the good family was to be as self-sufficient as the good man. — Kenneth Keniston

We are aware that the order of God requires the exercise of humility, but not of servility of slaves; but a humility that can be associated with undoubted courage and unflinching integrity; at the same time there is no room for pride, self-sufficient pride, that rests solely upon its own capabilities, and refuses to look for the support and countenance of others.
MS 7:91 [MS is the Millenial Star] — John Andreas Widtsoe

Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation. This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat: these two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. — Frederic Bastiat

In these few minutes one gets an overwhelming impression of the absolute identity of Body and Mind, and the fact that our highest functions - consciousness and self - are not entities, self-sufficient, "above" the body, but neuropsychological constructs - processes - dependent on the continuity of bodily experience and its integration. — Oliver Sacks

So if it's so important for you to be self-sufficient, why do you call my self-sufficiency stubborn? Why can't I be self-sufficient too?" Her voice got strangely hoarse on the last words, and it wasn't because she wanted to cry.
He lifted the hand that had been caressing her back and cupped her cheek with it instead. "Because I'm here", he murmured. "Because I'm here, and I want to help you. — Noelle Adams

Science is a self-sufficient activity. — Jonathan Miller

His aim was the creation of self sufficient small towns,really very nice towns if you were docile and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending your life with others with no plans of their own. As in all Utopias, the right to have plans of any significance belonged only to the planner in charge.
- discussing Ebenezer Howards' Garden City — Jane Jacobs

There is a great deal of illusion in a work of art; one could go farther and say that it is illusory in and of itself, as a "work." Its ambition is to make others believe that it was not made but rather simply arose, burst forth from Jupiter's head like Pallas Athena fully adorned in enchased armor. But that is only a pretense. No work has ever come into being that way. It is indeed work, artistic labor for the purpose of illusion-and now the question arises whether, given the current state of our consciousness, our comprehension, and our sense of truth, the game is still permissible, still intellectually possible, can still be taken seriously; whether the work as such, as a self-sufficient and harmonically self-contained structure, still stands in a legitimate relation to our problematical social condition, with its total insecurity and lack of harmony; whether all illusion, even the most beautiful, and especially the most beautiful, has not become a lie today. — Thomas Mann

Art is self-sufficient and need serve no moral or political purpose — Walter Pater

Food became for me a way of becoming self-sufficient with my hands, to regain manual literacy, which I think has been lost on our generation and certainly younger generations. Very few people can actually make things with their hands and do things with their hands. — Timothy Ferriss

But the very act of pausing in a busy day to pray is an act of weakening pride in my life, acknowledging that I am a dependent creature. I am not self sufficient. — C.J. Mahaney

Without parents who had time for her, at an early age she had made herself self-sufficient. — Hanif Kureishi

A retreat will teach you again and again that you are neither indispensable nor self-sufficient. — Karen Lord

The little that he had said, thus far, had been sufficient to convince me that I was speaking to a gentleman. He had what I may venture to describe as the unsought self-possession, which is a sure sign of good breeding, not in England only, but everywhere else in the civilized world. — Wilkie Collins

We should devote ourselves to being self-sufficient and must not depend upon the external ratings by others for our happiness. — Bruce Lee

When on the created level of existence man thinks God's thoughts after him, that is, when man thinks in self-conscious submission to the voluntary revelation of the self-sufficient God, he has therewith the only possible ground of certainty for his knowledge. When man thinks thus he thinks as a covenant creature should wish to think. — Cornelius Van Til

[I]n the end this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin. — Elizabeth I

Happiness, therefore, being found to be something final; and self-sufficient, is the end at which all actions aim. — Aristotle.

The ultimate difference between God's wisdom and man's wisdom is how they relate to the glory of God's grace in Christ crucified. God's wisdom makes the glory of God's grace our supreme treasure. But man's wisdom delights in seeing himself as resourceful, self-sufficient, self determining, and not utterly dependent on God's free grace. — John Piper

It is easy to forget the cohesiveness of a free people in times of peace and prosperity. New York is an extreme example of the great pandemonium that results when countless individuals and groups pursue their diverse interests in the normal course of life. In a crisis, however, a national tribe comes together ... despite the centrifugal forces that pull us in different directions, there is a deep national unity that holds us together.
Unity, however, is not sufficient for the challenges ahead. America also needs the moral self-confidence to meet its adversary ... Americans cannot succeed unless they are convinced of fighting on behalf of the good. — Dinesh D'Souza

A church that is deeply aware of it's misery and nakedness before a holy God will cling tenaciously to an all sufficient Savior, while one that is self-confident and relatively unaware of its inherent sinfulness will reach for religion and morality whenever it seems convenient — Michael Horton

People belittle or ignore or even rebel against God, because they view the
processes of nature as having self-sufficient causes, normally regarded by them as
ultimate. They do not realize that the universe is a sign pointing to something
"beyond" itself, something without which the universe, with all its natural causes,
would be and could be nothing. — Fazlur Rahman

Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men. — Ayn Rand

The myth of self-sufficiency blinds us to the workings of other forces in family life. For families are not now, nor were they ever, the self-sufficient building blocks of society, exclusively responsible, praiseworthy, and blamable for their own destiny. They are deeply influenced by broad social and economic forces over which they have little control. — Kenneth Keniston

The assumption of all education is that learning will be directed toward constructive ends and I'm convinced that colleges should support students in their determination to be useful, self-sufficient, and productive. — Ernest L. Boyer

I have realized that part of being Dauntless is being willing to make things more difficult for yourself in order to be self-sufficient. There's nothing especially brave about wandering dark streets with no flashlight, but we are not supposed to need help, even from light. We are supposed to be capable of anything. I like that. Because there might come a day when there is no flashlight, there is no gun, there is no guiding hand. And I want to be ready. — Veronica Roth

Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places. I learned about these qualities during my bouts with depression. In that deadly darkness, the faculties I had always depended on collapsed. My intellect was useless; my emotions were dead; my will was impotent; my ego was shattered. But from time to time, deep in the thickets of my inner wilderness, I could sense the presence of something that knew how to stay alive even when the rest of me wanted to die. That something was my tough and tenacious soul. — Parker J. Palmer

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient. — Howard Hodgkin

For over forty years, in a spirit of love, members of the Church have been counseled to be thrifty and self-reliant; to avoid debt; pay tithes and a generous fast offering; be industrious; and have sufficient food, clothing, and fuel on hand to last at least one year. Today there are compelling reasons to reemphasize this counsel. — Ezra Taft Benson

The 'coming of the Self' is immanent; and the process of collective 'individuation' is living itself out in human history. One way or another, the world is going to be made a single whole entity. But it will be unified either in mutual mass destruction or by means of mutual human consciousness. If a sufficient number of individuals can have the experience of the coming of the Self as an individual, inner experience, we may just possibly be spared the worst features of its external manifestation. — Edward F Edinger

Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York city. — Walter Lippmann

We are to pray in times of adversity, lest we become faithless and unbelieving. We are to pray in times of prosperity, lest we become boastful and proud. We are to pray in times of danger, lest we become fearful and doubting. We need to pray in times of security, lest we become self-sufficient. — Billy Graham

Perhaps the greatest self-deceit is to tell ourselves that we can be self-sufficient. — Joseph Stowell

Being Jewish myself, I somehow didn't see the problem: who cares what a mentally ill (but strangely likable) individual says? If he didn't make some money at chess, I could see him becoming a street person, shaking his fists at cars as they passed by his corner of the block. Isn't it preferable to have him in a self-sufficient position rather than as a liability of the state? — Jeremy Silman

The world teaches us to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, self-motivating. But anytime we put self before Savior, we're in trouble — Toni Sorenson

By depriving Rejewski of the keys, Langer believed he was preparing him for the inevitable time when the keys would no longer be available. He knew that if war broke out it would be impossible for Schmidt to continue to attend covert meetings, and Rejewski would then be forced to be self-sufficient. Langer thought that Rejewski should practice self-sufficiency in peacetime, as preparation for what lay ahead. — Simon Singh

The camel has evolved to be relatively self-sufficient. On the other hand, the camel has not evolved to smell good. Neither has Perl. — Larry Wall

When man thinks in self-conscious submission to the voluntary revelation of the self-sufficient God, he has therewith the only possible ground of certainty for his knowledge. — Cornelius Van Til

[on her Amish friends]I do know this family has borne losses and grief, just like the rest of us. But if they are generally content, must such a life inevitably be dismissed as mythical, or else merely quaint? ... It sounds like a community type that went extinct a generation ago. But it didn't, not completely. If a self-sufficient farming community has survived here, it remains a possibility elsewhere. — Barbara Kingsolver

Many strong girls have similar stories: They were socially isolated and lonely in adolescence. Smart girls are often the girls most rejected by peers. Their strength is a threat and they are punished for being different. Girls who are unattractive or who don't worry about their appearance are scorned. This isolation is often a blessing because it allows girls to develop a strong sense of self. Girls who are isolated emerge from adolescence more independent and self-sufficient than girls who have been accepted by others.
Strong girls may protect themselves by being quiet and guarded so that their rebellion is known by only a few trusted others. They may be cranky and irascible and keep critics at a distance so that only people who love them know what they are up to. They may have the knack of shrugging off the opinions of others or they may use humor to deflect the hostility that comes their way. — Mary Pipher

There is part of me that longs to have the back-to-the-earth life - make my own bread, grow my own wheat, just be really self-sufficient - but I am not, at the moment, willing to give up the luxury of modern life, and amazing schools for my kids, and things that I've come to rely on that are parts of society. — Lauren Groff

For Rose of Sharon was pregnant and careful. Her hair, braided and wrapped around her head, made an ash-blond crown. Her round soft face, which had been voluptuous and inviting a few months ago, had already put on the barrier of pregnancy, the self-sufficient smile, the knowing perfection-look; and her plump body - full soft breasts and stomach, hard hips and buttocks that had swung so freely and provocatively as to invite slapping and stroking - her whole body had become demure and serious. Her whole thought and action were directed inward on the baby. She balanced on her toes now, for the baby's sake. And the world was pregnant to her; she thought only in terms of reproduction and of motherhood. — John Steinbeck

In keeping with original Mormon teachings, much of the property in Hildale and Colorado City is held in trust for the church. Striving to be as self-sufficient as possible, the community grows a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, and everyone, including children, is expected to help bring in the yield. — Scott Anderson