Too Dependent Quotes & Sayings

I realized that searching for a mentor has become the professional equivalent of waiting for Prince Charming. We all grew up on the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty," which instructs young women that if they just wait for their prince to arrive, they will be kissed and whisked away on a white horse to live happily ever after. Now young women are told that if they can just find the right mentor, they will be pushed up the ladder and whisked away to the corner office to live happily ever after. Once again, we are teaching women to be too dependent on others. — Sheryl Sandberg

Our feelings about menstruation are the image of what it is to be a woman in this culture. While menstruation and the fear of revealing evidence of loss of body control bear possibilities of humiliation for women of which men are not aware, it is humiliating too to be that sex whose voice and presence carry less significance. It is humiliating to speak the same words as a man and have his heard, and not yours. It is humiliating to feel invisible when God gave you a body as solid as his. It is humiliating that women are accorded little dignity unless they are married. We twist these humiliations around, of course, and say it is glorious to have a man fight our battles for us, put us on a pedestal, take care of us. It is, if you enjoy being dependent on someone else. — Nancy Friday

I was becoming too dependent on female attention, allowing it to be my sole reason for leaving the house besides food. In the process of dehumanizing the opposite sex, I had also been dehumanizing myself. — Neil Strauss

The biggest danger is that actors become entirely too dependent on the idea of training. They think that if they continue to train and train and train, it's going to make them better. — Titus Welliver

Needs? I guess that is what bothers so many folks. They keep expanding their needs until they are dependent on too many things and too many other people ... I wonder how many things in the average American home could be eliminated if the question were asked, "Must I really have this?" I guess most of the extras are chalked up to comfort or saving time.
Funny thing about comfort - one man's comfort is another man's misery. Most people do't work hard enough physically anymore, and comfort is not easy to find. It is surprising how comfortable a hard bunk can be after you come down off a mountain. — Richard Proenneke

But Frances was beginning to feel that somewhere along the line, property, business, and all that contributes to the creation of wealth, must give back to government enough to guarantee adequate safeguarding of human welfare. The question would be, how to protect human beings against homelessness, starvation, and dependent old age without breaking down human initiative. She was seeing this as one fundamental problem of the government of the future; seeing too that somewhere leaders must arise who will be able to cope with this problem - honest leaders who will see the problem in its many-sidedness, and at last be able to solve it constructively. — May Martin Van Wye

Maeniel felt this was why all the great sages never wrote anything down. In the final analysis, scriptures are futile things, dependent as they are on the intentions of the interpreter. All too often too literal a mind can lead human students into strange follies. Sometimes it is better to allow the searchers to try to plumb the depths of the great mystery on their own and accept that not every one of those taking the road will see the same end. — Alice Borchardt

But it is the knowledge of how contingent my unease is, how dependent on a baby that wails beneath my window one day and does not wail the next, that brings the worst shame to me, the greatest indifference to annihilation. I know somewhat too much; and from this knowledge, once one has been infected, there seems to be no recovering. I ought never to have taken my lantern to see what was going on in the hut by the granary. On the other hand, there was no way, once I had picked up the lantern, for me to put it down again. The knot loops in upon itself; I cannot find the end. — J.M. Coetzee

The weaknesses, failures, and sins of our family are the places where we learn that we need grace too. It is there, in those dark mercies, that God teaches us to be humbly dependent. It is there that He draws near to us and sweetly reveals His grace. Paul's suffering teaches us to reinterpret our thorn. Instead of seeing it as a curse, we are to see it as the very thing that keeps us pinned close to the Lord. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

I did not think so at first. But the US is so incredibly dependent on oil, that they wanted to secure oil in case competition on the world market becomes too hard. — Hans Blix

Too many Mainers are dependent on government handouts. Government dependency has not - and never will - create prosperity. — Paul LePage

Too many Americans are dependent on federal government. — Jim DeMint

Mentors have their own strengths and weaknesses. The good ones allow you to develop your own style and then to leave them when the time is right. Such types can remain lifelong friends and allies. But often the opposite will occur. They grow dependent on your services and want to keep you indentured. They envy your youth and unconsciously hinder you, or become overcritical. You must be aware of this as it develops. Your goal is to get as much out of them as possible, but at a certain point you may pay a price if you stay too long and let them subvert your confidence. Your submitting to their authority is by no means unconditional, and in fact your goal all along is eventually to find your way to independence, having internalized and adapted their wisdom. — Robert Greene

The average American is just like the child in the family. You give him some responsibility and he is going to amount to something. He is going to do something. If, on the other hand, you make him completely dependent and pamper him and cater to him too much, you are going to make him soft, spoiled and eventually a very weak individual. — Richard M. Nixon

I was terrified of being dependent too, Alma," Dr. Catherine Hope told her one day. "But I've realized it's not such a big deal. You get used to it, and are grateful for the assistance. I can't dress or take a shower on my own, I have problems brushing my teeth and cutting the chicken on my plate, but I've never been more contented than I am now. — Isabel Allende

First meditate, be blissful, then much love will happen of its own accord. Then being with others is beautiful and being alone is also beautiful. Then it is simple, too. You dont depend on others and you dont make others dependent on you. — Rajneesh

Generally speaking, we call neurotic any life style that begins to constrict too much, that prevents free forward momentum, new choices, and growth that a person may want and need. For example, a person who is trying to find his salvation only in a love relationship but who is being defeated by this too narrow focus is neurotic. He can become overly passive and dependent, fearful of venturing out on his own, of making his life without his partner, no matter how that partner treats him. The object has become his "All," his whole world; and he is reduced to the status of a simple reflex of another human being. — Ernest Becker

When I talk of forgiveness I mean the belief that you can come out the other side a better person. A better person than the one being consumed by anger and hatred. Remaining in that state locks you in a state of victimhood, making you almost dependent on the perpetrator. If you can find it in yourself to forgive then you are no longer chained to the perpetrator. You can move on, and you can even help the perpetrator to become a better person too — Desmond Tutu

We are already too dependent on gambling revenue. If we continue, we will soon be owned by them. — Donald L. Carcieri

I was happy to know her in my small, formal, dependent way. And I felt a ravenous grief for nice boys who are too stupid to take care of themselves, and too dumb to remember to check the surrounding brush for snakes before settling down to sleep for the night. — John Darnielle

Freedom can never be completely safeguarded by rules and laws. It is as much dependent on the courage, integrity, and responsibility of each of us as it is on these qualities in those who govern. Every trait in us and our leaders which points to passive submission to mere power betrays democratic freedom. In our American system of democratic government, three different powerful branches serve to check each other, the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. Yet when there is no will to prevent encroachment of the power of one by any of the others, this system of checks, too, can degenerate. — Joost A.M. Meerloo

You cannot be too active as regards your own efforts; you cannot be too dependent as regards Divine grace. Do every thing as if God did nothing; depend upon God as if He did everything. — John Angell James

You have come to Cambridge to study the interdependence of matter and energy. Please remember that energy and matter are in no way something distinct from yourselves. Remember, too, that scientists are not dispassionate. Your judgement and your ability to do good work will be in part dependent on your digestion, your prejudices and above all, your emotional life. You must face the fact that if another human being, whose welfare means considerably more to you than your own, behaves in a very different way from anything you had expected, then your efficiency may be impaired. When the heart is breaking, it is nothing but an absurd illusion to think you can taste the blood. Still I repeat, your efficiency may be impaired. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Besides the Self [Soul], what is everything else? It is all worldly interactions (vyavahar). And worldly interaction is dependent on the non-Self (parashrit). Because people believe the non-Self dependent state (parashrit) to be Self-dependent (swashrit); you too believe it to be so. How can a disease leave once it has set in? This worldly disease has increased into a chronic disease! How can one become free from it? If one attains the 'science', he can be free! — Dada Bhagwan

Our present agriculture, in general, is not ecologically sustainable now, and it is a long way from becoming so. It is too toxic. It is too dependent on fossil fuels. It is too wasteful of soil, of soil fertility, and of water. It is destructive of the health of the natural systems that surround and support our economic life. And it is destructive of genetic diversity, both domestic and wild. So — Wendell Berry

In everything regarding your salvation and the attainment of mercy, you are dependent on your soul. Thus no sacrifice can be too great for you. If your virtues hinder you from salvation, discard them, since they have become evil to you. The slave to virtue finds the way as little as the slave to vices. — C. G. Jung

For the thing that troubles us about the industrial economy is that it is not comprehensive enough, that, moreover, it tends to destroy what it does not comprehend, and that it is dependent upon much that it does not comprehend. In attempting to criticize such an economy, we naturally pose against it an economy that does not leave anything out, and we can say without presuming too much that the first principle of the Kingdom of God is that it includes everything; in it, the fall of every sparrow is significant. We are in it, whether we know it or not, and whether we wish to be or not. — Wendell Berry

If a sound body and a sound mind, which is as much as to say health and virtue, are to be preferred before all other considerations, ought not men, in choosing a business either for themselves or children, to refuse such as are unwholesome for the body, and such as make a man too dependent, too much obliged to please others, and too much subjected to their humors in order to be recommended and get a livelihood? — Benjamin Franklin

[American] conformism might approximate collectivism, not so much in economic respects, and not too much in political respects, but very much in the pattern of daily life and thought. Whether this will happen or not, and if it does to what degree, is partly dependent on the power of resistance in those who represent the opposite pole of the courage to be, the courage to be as oneself. — Paul Tillich

The trouble with you, I think, is you are still too dependent on others. You expect too much from outside you and demand too little of yourself. You hope everything will be made smooth and easy for you by someone else. Well, it's coming to the point where you are old enough, and have been around enough, to see that this will get you exactly nowhere. You will be what you make yourself and you have got to do that job absolutely alone and on your own, whether you're in school or holding down a job. — Eugene O'Neill

[the doctor] clicked by mistake on the notes of a patient she'd got to know well - too well. The unfortunate Mrs. Swayne had become unhealthily doctor-dependent. But had she grasped the nettle? Had she actually finally and against all predictions left the country? — Jane Wilson-Howarth

In the solitude of death, the young child or the mature adult can turn to another for comfort without feeling childish or dependent. The newly emancipated, self-sufficient young adult may have too much personal pride to allow himself to accept the support and the understanding he so desperately needs as he moves toward death. The specific emotional reaction of the newly mature young man to the prospect of personal death is RAGE. He feels that life is completely within his grasp so that death above all else is the great ravisher and destroyer. These mature young men who have worked, trained and striven to reach self-confidence and self-sufficiency now appreciate what they can do and what they can enjoy and that suddenly it will all end. They are so ready to live, to them death is a brutal, personal attack, an unforgivable insult, a totally unacceptable event. — Ronald J. Glasser

Perhaps we have been dependent too long on language and thought, and need to reawaken our inherent sense of the subtle vibration of Energy-Consciousness. All you have to do is unblock the blocked parts and awaken the sleeping parts of your being to access it. — Ilchi Lee

The worst part about being so small is that I always have to rely on someone. I can't go anywhere on my own, so I'm always dependent. I can't run or walk too fast. If I was taller for a day, I'd just go off on my own independently. — Jyoti Amge

Indians still consider the whites a brutal people who treat their children like enemies - playthings, too, coddling them like pampered pets or fragile toys, but underneath always like enemies, enemies that must be restrained, bribed, spied upon, and punished. They believe that children so treated will grow up as dependent and immature as pets and toys, and as angry and dangerous as enemies within the family circle, to be appeased and fought. — Mari Sandoz

Dictatorships usually exist primarily because of the internal power distribution in the home country. The population and society are too weak to cause the dictatorship serious problems, wealth and power are concentrated in too few hands. Although dictatorships may benefit from or be somewhat weakened by international actions, their continuation is dependent primarily on internal factors. — Gene Sharp

Love is something too abstract and indistinguishable. It is dependent we perceived and experienced by us. If we did not exist, it does not exist. And we are so changing ... Then love can only be too. Love ignites, passes away, breaks, breaks us, revives ... we revived. Love may be eternal, but not us, it makes us eternal ... Beyond our death, love that we awake continues to fulfill its way. — Julie Maroh

I had never deserved to be forgiven in the first place when I aas converted. I could do nothing to merit God's favour, His grace, His love. If all I had ever known was unmerited and undeserved grace, how could I then forfeit that which I never earned?... Was I too proud, in some strange, inverted way to humble myself to accept an unmerited forgiveness? I know that it was all of grace, yet my inner being wanted the right to do something to merit it. I was trying to work out my own salvation, to earn God's forgiveness, to prove the sincerity of my repentance...At last I knew that it was true. It was not based on my feeling or on my emotions. It was not dependent on my faith or my obedience. In no way could I merit or deserve it. He loved me. He knew me through and through, better than I knew myself, and yet still, He loved me. Christ died on Calvary to tell me that. Christ lives in Heaven, an unceasing intercessor on my behalf to make that love real to me in my experience. — Helen Roseveare

For too long, too many people dependent on Social Security have been cruelly frightened by individuals seeking political gain through demagoguery and outright falsehood, and this must stop. — Ronald Reagan

When the lifestyle of a social group becomes obsolete, when work turns into a boring routine and community responsibilities lose their meaning, it is likely that leisure will become increasingly more important. And if a society becomes too dependent on entertainment, it is likely that there will be less psychic energy left to cope creatively with the technological and economic challenges that will inevitably arise. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Geez, you guys. I know I'm popular and all, but seriously, you're a bit too co-dependent for me. I'm going to need you to step away from my personal bubble." A wispy vine-woman curled ivy tendrils around his arm, and he sliced through them with his dagger. "No! Bad Wraith! No touchie! — Julie Kagawa

We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of 'success' as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, 'schooling,' but historically that isn't true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prison. — John Taylor Gatto

It's far too much to say that effective hoping is the only - or even the biggest - part of what it takes to succeed. If 14% of business productivity can be attributed to hope, that means 86% is dependent on raw talent, fickle business cycles, the quality of the product you're selling, and often pure, dumb luck. — Jeffrey Kluger

If you're a woman, it's almost impossible to establish a relationship. You're too much for everybody. It's too much. The woman always has to play this role of being fragile and dependent. And if you're not, they'are fascinated by you, but only for a little while. And then they want to change you and crush you. And then they leave. So, lots of lonely hotel rooms, my dear. — Marina Abramovic

Poor dusky children of slavery, men and women of my own race-the transition from slavery to freedom was too sudden for you! The bright dreams were too rudely dispelled; you were not prepared for the new life that opened before you, and the great masses of the North learned to look upon your helplessness with indifference-learned to speak of you as an idle, dependent race. Reason should have prompted kinder thoughts. Charity is ever kind. — Elizabeth Keckley

Finland, and all the other European countries, we are too dependent on imported energy. We should be using a broader variety of energy resources. — Tarja Halonen

We have a lot of controlling people who are trying to tell us how to live our lives, and a lot of co-dependent people around us. We bump up against these people, too, when we're trying to get on the spiritual path. — Echo Bodine

Rado explains that people with depression are usually too dependent on the judgments of others for their own sense of self-esteem. — Nick Dubin

The high prices also highlight the fact that the U.S. is too heavily dependent on fossil fuels that we import from unstable parts of the world. To protect our national security, we must become more energy secure. — Dan Lipinski

The poet who sees himself as a hero or a prophet, or a priest of the socio-political forces to which he is loyal, which he believes are the historical necessities of his times, too easily becomes a puppet. He has no external measure with which to assess reality. Whether he submits to the forces or rejects them, he becomes a parody of himself, and then without knowing it submits his gifts to the demons of his era. He loses his place in the continuity of time. He becomes dependent on social affirmation and the drug of exalted feelings common to all revolutionaries. He destroys, even as he thinks he creates. — Michael D. O'Brien

A farmer is dependent on too many things outside his control; it makes for modesty. — Bharati Mukherjee

Obama has become too dependent on formal speeches and set town halls. His idea of mixing it up is taking off his jacket. — Dee Dee Myers

What had become of the girl who sought out British Socinian texts all on her own, argued over Swedenborgian theology with adults three times her age, read the New Testament thirty times in one summer, and taught herself Hebrew so that she could make her own translation of the Old Testament? There had been many obstacles. Because of financial hardship, she had been "thrown too early" into the working world, teaching long hours when she might have studied and written more. And there was the fact of her sex. Without the option of college or a profession, Elizabeth had not known how or where to apply herself. She had looked to men of genius to confirm her talents and grown "dependent on the daily consolations of friendship." She could see now that she had "constantly craved . . . assurances" that should have "come from within." Yet — Megan Marshall

When I tell children that they are far too dependent on their gizmos, they do not deny it. But they really don't care. This is their real life - texting about trivial things; listening to numbing music on their private headphones. The machines block everything out - you create your own little trivial world. — Bill O'Reilly

Everyone knows of great projects that were too dependent on a charismatic individual, or simply too expensive to be replicated. — Geoff Mulgan

I had no more value after I became an author than when I was in my home tending to runny noses, little bumps and bruises ... Our value can't be wrapped inside what others think or we think, because that is too dependent on this ever-shifting world. The value God places on us makes us more than we think we are, even on our hardest days, weeks, or years. — Cindy Woodsmall

Do you mind not intoning the responses, Jeeves?" I said. "This is a most complicated story for a man with a headache to have to tell, and if you interrupt you'll make me lose the thread. As a favour to me, therefore, don't do it. Just nod every now and then to show that you're following me."
I closed my eyes and marshalled the facts.
"To start with then, Jeeves, you may or may not know that Mr Sipperley is practically dependent on his Aunt Vera."
"Would that be Miss Sipperley of the Paddock, Beckley-on-the-Moor, in Yorkshire, sir?"
"Yes. Don't tell me you know her!"
"Not personally, sir. But I have a cousin residing in the village who has some slight acquaintance with Miss Sipperley. He has described her to me as an imperious and quick-tempered old lady ... But I beg your pardon, sir, I should have nodded."
"Quite right, you should have nodded. Yes, Jeeves, you should have nodded. But it's too late now. — P.G. Wodehouse

But underneath it all I tell myself the tiny glow-worm of the Leave event will be blinking. Up to me to surmount the trial, everything is dependent upon my will, impotent, tenacious, helpless, dogged, with a swollen sense of honor, I tell myself. I know me. Not that I'm the strongest as my friend used to claim, but I've always had the strength - weakness maybe - to believe that if "in the end we die, too fast," as he puts it, later on, as sequel, there's a chance that someone-I-don't-know-who - or I-don't-know-what - may come back. No keeping oneself from dying. Afterwards nothing stops one returning. — Helene Cixous

Yet they sense that something is wrong. They can't quite put their finger on the problem. As time passes, they grow more and more dependent on each other; they are getting older; any opportunities to make a new life are vanishing fast. They try to keep busy doing reading or embroidery, watching television, seeing friends, but there is always the conversation over supper or after supper. He is easily irritated, she is more silent than usual. They can see that they are growing further and further apart, but cannot understand why. They reach the conclusion that this is what marriage is like, but won't talk to their friends about it; they are the image of the happy couple who support each other and share the same interests. She takes a lover, so does he, but it's never anything serious, of course. What is important, necessary, essential, is to act as if nothing is happening, because it's too late to change. — Paulo Coelho

Of course, I prefer organic farming to chemical-dependent farming, but sometimes absolutist organic prescriptions go too far. I don't even rule out the possibility of genetic modification generating some benign ideas, as long as we can keep them away from monopolists such as Monsanto. — Tristram Stuart

Rather than teasing the buyers, we may blame the society in which they lived for setting up a situation where the purchase of ornate cabinets felt psychologically necessary and rewarding, where respect was dependent on baroque displays. Rather than a tale of greed, the history of luxury could more accurately be read as a record of emotional trauma. It is the legacy of those who have felt pressured by the disdain of others to add an extraordinary amount to their bare selves in order to signal that they too may lay a claim to love. — Alain De Botton

We are so dependent on luck, good and bad. I think of those men and women - cases faintly parallel to mine - who live in one room and eat poorly and lie in bed, since their incomes are too small for any marked activity. Their lives would be unbearable were it not for their hopes of good luck and fears of bad. They have, in fact, little of either; but illusion magnifies what there is. — Geoffrey Household

More than anything else, he watches to see if you'll be too emotionally dependent on him. — Sherry Argov

Take a company like GM. For years, people were warning its execs that the company was too dependent on big SUVs and trucks, that it was falling behind other companies in innovation. A lack of knowledge wasn't the problem. And mothers and fathers everywhere try to warn their kids that maybe a giant tattoo isn't such a good idea. Good luck in that fight, Knowledge. — Dan Heath

I would not be weak again. I would not be dependent on anyone else. I would never have to endure the touch of the Attor as it dragged me because I was too helpless to know where and how to hit. Never again. But — Sarah J. Maas

She was too dependent on what other people thought of her, and that was her downfall. She cared too much. She was only what other people saw in her - -that is, what she imagined they saw in her. — Steph Bowe

This reduction of 'society' to a thin membrane of interactions between private individuals is presented today as the ambition of libertarians and free marketeers. But we should never forget that it was first and above all the dream of Jacobins, Bolsheviks and Nazis: if there is nothing that binds us together as a community or society, then we are utterly dependent upon the state. Governments that are too weak or discredited to act through their citizens are more likely to seek their ends by other means: by exhorting, cajoling, threatening and ultimately coercing people to obey them. The loss of social purpose articulated through public services actually increases the unrestrained powers of the over-mighty state. — Tony Judt

Too often, charity is extended to another when his actions or conduct are acceptable to us. The exhibition of charity to another must not be dependent on his performance. It should be given because of who we are-not because of how we behave. — H. Burke Peterson

It is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium. — George Eliot

We are more dependent on science and engineering than at any other time in history. However, there is plenty of evidence that far too many people are scientifically illiterate, often having been put off science at school. — Robert Winston

Those can most easily dispense with society who are the most calculated to adorn it; they only are dependent on it who possess no mental resources, for though they bring nothing to the general mart, like beggars, they are too poor to stay at home. — Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington

What happens if you lose?" Jeremy pressed.
"I don't see it as winning or losing. I'm just looking for a middle ground," he [Justin] said. "I get that technology is convenient and has its benefits. We definitely can't live without it. We can't go back to living in caves. But most people are so plugged in, they're not even living in the real world. Our lives aren't grounded by anything. Being too dependent on something makes you a slave to it. And I sure as hell won't worship a digital screen. So I'm looking for a halfway point. A balance. It's not just about ending digital school. It's about having a choice. — Katie Kacvinsky

The Spiral Gallery may happen, too. It is not dependent on government funding. — Daniel Libeskind

Letting go all else, cling to the following few truths. Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant: all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. This mortal life is a little thing, lived in a little corner of the earth; and little, too, is the longest fame to come - dependent as it is on a succession of fast-perishing little men who have no knowledge even of their own selves, much less of one long dead and gone. — Marcus Aurelius

Realize that significance is not dependent upon success. Too many people fall into the trap of thinking, "Once I make it rich, I'll become significant." This is rarely the case. Begin striving for it now. — Joshua Becker

If taxpayers want to keep more of the money they earn, they must also work to become less dependent on a government check. We look to government too often and to ourselves not enough. — Cal Thomas

Politics is too often regarded as a poor relation, inherently dependent and subsidiary; it is rarely praised as something with a life and character of its own. — Bernard Crick

Because mankind can circumvent evolutionary law, it is incumbent upon him, say evolutionary biologists to develop another law to abide by if he wishes to survive, to not outstrip his food base. He must learn restraint. He must derive some other, wiser way of behaving toward the land. He must be more attentive to the biological imperatives of the system of sun-driven protoplasm upon which he, too, is still dependent. Not because he must, because he lacks inventiveness, but because herein is the accomplishment of the wisdom that for centuries he has aspired to. Having taken on his own destiny, he must now think with critical intelligence about where to defer. — Barry Lopez

The problem with our region is that there are areas with oil and too much money, and then there are places such as south Lebanon and the Palestinian territories where there is no work, and instead of developing industry, they become dependent on oil money - this results in extremism. — Stef Wertheimer

Some people become so centered on an enemy, so totally obsessed with the behavior of another person that they become blind to everything except their desire for that person to lose, even if it means losing themselves. Lose/Lose is the philosophy of adversarial conflict, the philosophy of war. Lose/Lose is also the philosophy of the highly dependent person without inner direction who is miserable and thinks everyone else should be, too. If nobody ever wins, perhaps being a loser isn't so bad. — Stephen R. Covey

[I]f you don't feel or look rich, you don't necessarily feel the same sense of obligation that a traditional rich person does or should: Noblesse oblige is, after all, dependent on a classical idea of who is and is not the nobility. As that starts to fall away, obligation
to culture, to the future, to each other
begins to disappear too. — Ellen Cushing

In mature years I have always been gregarious, a lover of my kind, dependent upon the company of friends for the very pulse of moral life. To be marooned, to be shut up in a solitary cell, to inhabit a lighthouse, or to camp alone in a forest, these have always seemed to me afflictions too heavy to be borne, even in imagination. A state in which conversation exists not, is for me an air too empty of oxygen for my lungs to breathe it. — Edmund Gosse

To have submitted it to the legislative discretion of the States, would have been improper for the same reason; and for the additional reason that it would have rendered too dependent on the State governments that branch of the federal government which ought to be dependent on the people alone. — James Madison

The individual psychotherapy patient comes to the therapist with an almost automatic deference, a sense of dependence and compliance. The role pattern is old and established: the dependent child seeking guidance from a parent figure. There is no such traditional image for the family, no established pattern in which an entire family submits to the guidance of an individual. And the family structure is simply too powerful and too crucial for the members to go trustingly into an experience that threatens to change the entire matrix of their relationships. If the family therapist is to acquire that initial "authority figure" or "parent" role that is so necessary if therapy is to be more powerful than an ordinary social experience, he has to earn it. — Augustus Y. Napier