Self-sufficiency

Self-sufficiency is the state of not requiring aid or support.

Is the intellect to be regarded as autonomous and self-sufficient, as pursuing ends of its own, and as judging by standards of its own? or is it to be regarded as the servant of alien interests which impose their ends and standards upon it? ~ Ralph Barton Perry

Quotes

• The soul that does not consider the question of the body’s self-sufficiency cannot make itself self-sufficient.
  • Apollonius of Tyana, letter to Euphrates, Epp. Apoll. 82

• The man who follows nature and not vain opinions is independent in all things. For in reference to what is enough for nature every possession is riches, but in reference to unlimited desires even the greatest wealth is not riches but poverty.
  • Epicurus, Fragment 45

• Nothing satisfies the man who is not satisfied with a little.
  • Epicurus, Fragment 69

• Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all riches.
  • Epicurus, Fragment 70

• What is the scientific man? Firstly, a commonplace type of man, with commonplace virtues: that is to say, a non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient type of man.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, § 206 (Helen Zimmern trans.)

• Is the intellect to be regarded as autonomous and self-sufficient, as pursuing ends of its own, and as judging by standards of its own? or is it to be regarded as the servant of alien interests which impose their ends and standards upon it? The modern tendency has been towards the latter or practical interpretation of the knowing faculties.
  • Ralph Barton Perry, "The Integrity of the Intellect," Harvard Theological Review, vol. 13, no. 3, July 1920, p. 221

• We haven’t even got a word for the quality I mean—for the self-sufficiency of man’s spirit. It’s difficult to call it selfishness or egotism, the words have been perverted.
  • Ayn Rand, Howard Roark in The Fountainhead (1996), p. 607

• The feeling of self-sufficiency! It is that which restrains those whose personal value is in itself great riches, from such considerable sacrifices as are demanded by intercourse with the world. ... Ordinary people are sociable and complaisant just from the very opposite feeling;—to bear others’ company is easier for them than to bear their own.
  • Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims, T. B. Saunders, trans., § 9

See also

• Autodidacticism
• Autonomy