Source identified
“The greatest thing in the world is for a man to know that he is his own.”
Self-possession means keeping enough inward independence that obligations and attachments do not erase the person who carries them.
Source note: Essays of Montaigne, Book I, “Of Solitude,” Charles Cotton translation.
Source identified
“What is the Seal of Liberty Attained?—To be no longer ashamed of oneself.”
Nietzsche links attained freedom with release from self-shame, framing liberty as partly an inward change in one’s relation to oneself.
Source note: The Joyful Wisdom, aphorism 275; Thomas Common translation.
Source identified
“I WAS A MAN NOW.”
The emphatic line records Douglass’s restored sense of manhood and dignity after resisting physical domination; it belongs to a specific autobiographical struggle against enslavement.
Source note: My Bondage and My Freedom, immediately after Douglass describes his resistance to Covey; capitalization follows the represented Project Gutenberg text.
Source identified
“Resist much, obey little.”
The compact command favors independent judgment over reflexive obedience, especially when authority conflicts with conscience or freedom.
Source note: Leaves of Grass (1860), poem “Walt Whitman’s Caution,” represented on Wikisource from the 1860 edition.
Source identified
“My own mind is my own church.”
The compact statement places personal conscience and reason above compulsory religious institutions in Paine’s deistic argument.
Source note: The Age of Reason, Part I, Chapter I; Paine’s religious position is historical deism and should not be flattened into a generic anti-institution slogan.
Source identified
“Public opinion—private laziness.”
The epigram provocatively suggests that adopting public opinion can sometimes substitute borrowed judgment for the harder work of forming one’s own view.
Source note: Human, All-Too-Human, Part I, aphorism 482, “Repeated Once More”; Helen Zimmern translation.