Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week ("Declaring Your Independence")

June 30—July 6, 2024 | THIS WEEK: “Declaring Your Independence"

After the members of the Second Continental Congress approved and signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, John Adams wrote about the occasion in a letter to his wife Abigail: “I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding Generations as the great anniversary Festival.”

Adams went on to suggest that the signing of the Declaration should “be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty.” He then added: 

Reading these words, one might describe Adams as remarkably prescient—except for one small detail: he was talking about July 2nd, when the document was approved and signed, and not July 4th, when it was formally adopted by the Continental Congress.

For the remainder of his life, Adams considered the Second of July to be America’s true Independence Day, and he was so upset when the Fourth became the accepted holiday that he refused to participate in any celebrations on that date for the remainder of his life.

Opening Line of the Week

The opening words come from the novel’s 18-year-old protagonist, Christie Devon. When her aunt says, “Bless and save us, what do you mean child?” Christie replies:

“I mean that being of age, I’m going to take care of myself and not be a burden any longer. Uncle wishes me out of the way, thinks I ought to go, and sooner or later, will tell me so. I don’t intend to wait for that.”

And then, in response to her aunt saying that she’s gotten a crazy idea into her head, Christie replies in a way that would make modern-day feminists proud:

“I’ve thought it over thoroughly, and I’m sure it’s the right thing for me to do. I’m old enough to take care of myself; and if I’d been a boy, I should have been told to do it long ago. I hate to be dependent; and now there’s no need of it, I can’t bear it any longer.”

For nearly 2,000 memorable opening lines from every genre of world literature, go to www.GreatOpeningLines.com.

This Week’s Puzzler

On July 2, 1778, this man died at age 66 in Ermenonville, in northern France. At his death, he was already being regarded as one of history’s greatest thinkers, making historic contributions in the fields of philosophy—especially political philosophy—and education. 

Born in Switzerland in 1712, his mother died of fever nine days after his birth.  He and his older brother were raised by his father, a watchmaker, and a paternal aunt. Even though he was clearly precocious—reading Plutarch’s Lives at age ten, for example—he was an unambitious lad who drifted through life until his mid-thirties.

In 1749, he entered an essay contest sponsored by the Dijon Academy. When his essay, “A Discourse of the Arts and Sciences,” was awarded First Prize, it ignited a spark of intellectual activity that continued for the next several decades, and ultimately made him one of history’s most influential thinkers. 

To modern readers, this week’s Mystery Man is best remembered for the 1762 classic The Social Contract, an influential treatise that inspired many of America’s Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. The Social Contract contained what many regard as the greatest opening line in the history of non-fiction:

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

In 1762, he also came out with the novel Emile, a classic in the history of educational thought. The book, which he described as “the best and most important of all my writings,” has a striking contemporary relevance, even though written more than 250 years ago. It includes many memorable quotations, including this one:

 Who is this person? (Answer below)

Would You Describe Yourself as an Independent Person?

When most people think about the word independence, their focus is quite naturally on the political meaning of the term. After all, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, the primary meaning of independent is about a free nation:

“Not governed by a foreign power; self-governing.” 

Over time, independence also took on an important personal and psychological meaning, and it shows up nicely in the AHD’s secondary definition:

“Free from the influence, guidance, or control of another or others; self-reliant.” 

As you see here, self-reliance is the chief synonym of independence. From the 6th century B.C., Aesop’s maxim “The Gods help those who help themselves” has resonated with self-reliant people—and this inclination to rely on oneself rather than others is the quintessential quality of all independent people.

The essence of personal independence is living a life in accordance with one’s dreams and desires, and not according to the wishes—or worse, the directives—of others. For centuries, many of history’s wisest writers and thinkers have viewed independence as a key ingredient in the forging of a satisfying and meaningful existence.

As I was searching for quotations on this week’s theme, I found it fascinating that many of the best things ever said about independence never explicitly mention the term. And yet, because they are so masterfully crafted, they are still able to describe the essence of what it means to be an independent, self-reliant, autonomous person. Here’s a sampling:

• How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself. — Marcus Aurelius

• I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide. — Emily Brontë

• There is no support so strong as the strength that enables one to stand alone. — Ellen Glasgow

• I am a sect by myself, as far as I know. — Thomas Jefferson

• If you are not your own agent, you are someone else’s. — Alice E. Molloy

• The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself. — Michel de Montaigne

• She had the air of someone who walked among her own thoughts and found them sufficient company. — Patricia Wentworth

We all begin our lives in a state of dependency, but at a certain point in our development, most of us follow the example of Christie Devon, the protagonist in Louisa May Alcott’s 1873 novel Work, and declare our personal independence. For me, it occurred at age sixteen—a little earlier than is typical—and, to be honest, it had less to do with declaring my independence than in discovering it. Let me explain.

I was a junior in high school when I formally decided I would be going to college. Up to that point, nobody in my immediate family had done so, and the whole idea was complicated by the Grothe family’s somewhat dire financial situation. I still remember a conversation in which my mother tearfully confessed that she didn’t know how the family could come up with any money to help pay for college.

In 1959, about a week after I finished my junior year in high school, my father helped me land a job as a union laborer on the construction of the massive new Air Force Base being built just north of Minot, North Dakota. The starting wage was $3.25 an hour, a dramatic increase over the $1.25 an hour I’d been making at the local Dairy Queen.

For the next three months, my dad and I got up at 4:15 every morning, car-pooled with three other guys for over an hour, worked a ten-hour shift, and then straggled back home. It was the hardest work I’d ever done, and by the end of the summer, I felt as if I had made a major step forward in maturity. I recall sitting my parents down and announcing, “I’ve already saved enough money to pay for almost all of my first-year college expenses, and I’m hoping to pay for it all without asking for any money from you.”

The summer of 1960, the year I graduated from high school, was a virtual replay of the previous summer, but this time my dad and I were working on the construction of the new Air Force Base in Glasgow, Montana. Like the summer before, I salted away all of my paychecks, and when I arrived at the University of North Dakota in the fall, I had more than enough money to pay for the entire first year, and a good portion of the second.

I knew I was going to have to make that money stretch, so for the first two years of college I bussed tables (in exchange for free meals) and worked about twenty hours a week at a local men’s clothing store. For the last two years I worked full-time as the all-night desk clerk at the Stardust Manor motel. And when I graduated in 1964, I achieved the goal I’d set years earlier—I did it without asking my parents for a dime.

Things are very different for the youth of today, and these days perhaps the most important question is not when people achieve independence, but whether or not they will. Too often today, we see people in their twenties—and even well beyond—who remain emotionally as well as financially dependent on their families. There are many problems with this, of course, but Carl Jung may have expressed it best when he wrote in The Development of Personality (1910):

In addition to living independently, the other major characteristic of independence is thinking independently. In a 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs offered some of the best advice ever offered on the subject, saying to graduating seniors:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

To see the entire address, double-click the link below.

This week, in addition to celebrating Independence Day, it might be beneficial for you to also take a more personal approach to the subject. Do you view yourself as an independent person, and would you say that you are living an independent life? Let me caution you against a quick or superficial answer, though, because it’s possible that you might be more accurately described as dependent or co-dependent. 

There are countless millions of people across the country and around the world who think of themselves as independent, but who have a literal dependency on drugs, alcohol, pornography, sex, gambling, gaming, and other less-than-healthy pursuits. If this describes you, a life of independence becomes literally impossible.

It’s also possible that you might be better described as co-dependent, a term that first emerged in the 1970s to describe a pattern of “enabling” behaviors observed in spouses and family members of alcoholics. In her 1986 book Codependence, Anne Wilson Schaef wrote: “The idea of codependency is about giving up your own needs for someone else’s needs.”

Over time, the term co-dependency has evolved to describe a situation in which one person is so excessively reliant on another person for emotional support and validation that they will risk losing themselves in the process.

We see this happening routinely with people who become co-dependent with tyrannical parents, controlling spouses/lovers, cultish religious leaders, peddlers of conspiracy theories, and manipulative politicians. When the controlling figures say “jump,” their co-dependents don’t question the command, they ask “How high?” And when they say “black is white” or “up is down,” the co-dependents stifle their natural human aversion to mistruth by saying, essentially, “If you say so, I will also choose to believe that what is false is true.” In a 1991 book, this pathological form of co-dependency was brilliantly described by Linda Ellerbee:

So, to return to the question of the week, would you describe yourself as an 
independent person and an independent thinker?  Before you formulate a final answer, take a few moments to peruse this week’s selection of observations on the theme: 

• It is in the nature of a group and its power to turn against independence, the property of individual strength. — Hannah Arendt

• Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. — Ambrose Bierce

• We must be our own before we can be another’s. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

• The first of earthly blessings, independence. — Edward Gibbon

• It is easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing—that’s the Lord’s test. — Mahalia Jackson

• Passivity is the dragon every woman has to murder in her quest for independence. — Jill Johnston

• No one can be free unless he is independent. — Maria Montessori

• I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me. — Anna Quindlen

• The best kind of leader: one who creates independence, not dependence. — Gloria Steinem

• Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue. — Mary Wollstonecraft

For more quotations on the theme of INDEPENDENCE, go here.

Cartoon of the Week:

Answer to This Week’s Puzzler:

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1788)

Dr. Mardy’s Observation of the Week:

Thanks for joining me again this week. See you next Sunday morning, when the theme will be “Sense of Humor.”

Mardy Grothe

Websites: www.drmardy.com and www.GreatOpeningLines.com

Regarding My Lifelong Love of Quotations: A Personal Note