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Quotes about Taking Responsibility

    “You can graduate with the finest degrees. You can read the most useful books. You can enjoy the loving support of family and friends. But your degrees can’t take action for you. Your books can’t make the decision for you. Your family can’t live your life for you. There is no substitute for courage. At some point, you have to make the choice.”

    James Clear, Blog

      “Either don’t blame anyone…or blame yourself. For whatever happens. For everything that happens. Those are the options.”

      Ryan Holiday, Daily Stoic Blog

        “Nothing will save you, and so you must begin the work of saving yourself, which is the entire purpose of your life.”

        Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 167)

          “The true self of each person is the mind. Know therefore that you are a god. For a god is someone who moves, who feels, who remembers, who looks to the future, who rules over and guides and directs the body he is master of, just as that Supreme God directs the universe. And just as this eternal God controls the universe, which is partly mortal, so too your eternal spirit directs your fragile body.”

          Cicero, via The Daily Laws (Page 403)

            “Life is battle and struggle, and you will constantly find yourself facing bad situations, destructive relationships, dangerous engagements. How you confront these difficulties will determine your fate. If you feel lost and confused, if you lose your sense of direction, if you cannot tell the difference between friend and foe, you have only yourself to blame. Everything depends on your frame of mind and on how you look at the world. A shift of perspective can transform you from a passive and confused mercenary into a motivated and creative fighter.”

            Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 380)

              “The problem lies in asking somebody else to solve your own problem instead of asking yourself. I can give you ten thousand of my ways, but they are my way, not yours. An individual’s questions are answerable only by the individual himself, and nothing would be gained by his sitting in on a recital of mine.”

              Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 179)

                “People today foolishly try to believe that all the world’s senselessness and cruelty—the richness of the few, the great poverty of the many, the violence and warfare—happens outside their own lives and does not interfere with them and their way of life.”

                Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 262)

                  “You alone plan to commit a sin, you alone plan to do evil; and you alone can escape sin and purify your thoughts. Only your inner self can damn you, and only your inner self can save you.”

                  Dhammapada, via A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 236)

                    “I seek neither your approval nor to influence you. So do not make up your mind as to ‘this is this’ or ‘that is that.’ I will be more than satisfied if you begin to learn to investigate everything yourself from now on.”

                    Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 2)

                      “Individual goodness and individual evil both have the power to spread goodness and evil throughout the world.”

                      Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 167)

                        “to expect another to resolve all of our issues and give us the happiness we desire is to expect to see the sunrise without opening our own eyes. it is to ask a river to give us nourishment without dipping our own hands into the water. another cannot answer a riddle that was only ever meant for our own minds to solve. the universe seeks to enlighten and empower us, thus it is only rational that we are our own greatest healers.”

                        Yung Pueblo, Inward (Page 159)

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