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“The question rests with women themselves—to be decided by their own experience, and by the use of their own faculties.”
Mill argues that women themselves must test capacities and choices through experience rather than having those possibilities defined in advance by others.
Source note: The Subjection of Women, Chapter I; the sentence belongs to Mill’s case for free development rather than prescriptive claims about women’s nature.
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“Personal independence is a virtue.”
Douglass values personal agency and self-dependence while rejecting the idea that anyone creates a life entirely alone, placing independence within a wider network of social assistance and obligation.
Source note: Self-Made Men lecture, commonly dated to 1872 in edited versions. The compact statement occurs within an argument that values self-dependence while the lecture’s opening explicitly denies that anyone is literally or completely self-made; Library of Congress manuscript materials anchor the source identity and preserve later versions.
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“Intelligence is the key to freedom in act.”
Effective freedom depends on understanding conditions well enough to form workable plans and act through real constraints, rather than merely asserting an unconstrained will.
Source note: Human Nature and Conduct, Part Four discussion of freedom; Project Gutenberg #41386. Dewey immediately connects the claim with consulting conditions, planning and foresight; it is philosophical argument rather than neuroscientific evidence.
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“Freedom resides in individual self-conquest.”
Within Allen’s spiritual argument, freedom begins with mastery of impulses and ignorance before it can be discussed as an outward condition.
Source note: All These Things Added, Part II, “Perfect Freedom”; Wikisource 1903 text. This is Allen’s inward, religious conception of freedom, not a political definition.
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“Bitter for a free man is the bondage of debt.”
Debt can restrict future choices and independence, so borrowing is framed not only financially but also as a constraint on freedom.
Source note: The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, maxim 14, in Darius Lyman’s 1856 English rendering; maxim order can vary across editions.
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“Man's freedom lies in the power of this choice.”
Tolstoy locates a limited but meaningful freedom in whether a person recognizes and acts upon the truth they believe they have understood.
Source note: The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Chapter XII; Constance Garnett translation, Project Gutenberg #43302. In the concluding chapter Tolstoy locates human freedom in the recognition or rejection of truth already revealed to conscience; the sentence states that freedom lies in this choice.