We have a tendency to romanticize independence and see autonomy as a virtue. In my experience, such a view is a career killer. Autonomy is a life vest made out of sand. Independent people who do not have the skills to think and act interdependently may still be good individual producers, but they won’t be seen as good leaders or team players.

It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now — independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one's own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one's neighbors — are essentially those on which an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.

I place a profound belief—indeed a fervent faith—in the virtues of self reliance and personal independence. On these is founded the whole case for the free society, for the assertion that human progress is best achieved by offering the freest possible scope for the development of individual talents, qualified only by a respect for the qualities and the freedom of others...For many years there has been a subtle erosion of the essential virtues of the free society. Self-reliance has been sneered at as if it were an absurd suburban pretention. Thrift has been denigrated as if it were greed. The desire of parents to choose and to struggle for what they themselves regarded as the best possible education for their children has been scorned.

Personal independence is a virtue and it is the soul out of which comes the sturdiest manhood. But there can be no independence without a large share of self-dependence, and this virtue cannot be bestowed. It must be developed from within.

Independence is an attribute of man, the social being; it should not be viewed as the development to perfection of a natural, biological attribute of living matter. This is, in essence, an evolutionary viewpoint. Of course, we do not deny evolutionism itself. Science has long established the fact that man is a product of ages of evolution. Man is a product of evolution, but not his independence. Independence is a social product. Independence is an attribute given to man by society, not nature; it is not a natural gift, but has been formed and developed socially and historically.

Indeed, many of the corporate titans who dominate the American imagination live by an ideology of individualism that barely masks selfishness and an air of superiority. A philosophy of supreme self-reliance is common, and the pursuit of unfettered self-interest is considered a laudable ethic to live by.

Dependence on the State became a virtue; dependence on oneself was derided as ‘rugged individualism.’

The pleasures of self-approbation, together with the right cultivation of all our pleasures, require individual independence. Without independence men cannot become either wise, or useful, or happy.

Independence has always been a leitmotif for me and has been reflected in my career choices, my positioning in the artistic scene, and more generally, in my line of conduct. However, this really came to fruition when I was able to become financially independent; from there, I could not only impose my leitmotif, but also build it in a sustainable way

True independence means being free from the domination of your own internal automatic behaviors, not doing what you feel like when the urge strikes.

The little-understood concept of interdependence appears to many to smack of dependence, and therefore, we find people, often for selfish reasons, leaving their marriages, abandoning their children, and forsaking all kinds of social responsibility — all in the name of independence.

We live in a world in which individuals and busi­nessmen… they want to do so unencumbered by national boundaries. At the same time, modern democracies, at least as much as other forms of government, long for autonomy; they want to control their own destinies in ways responsive to the needs of an electorate often concerned less with na­tional than with local or sectorial interests. Yet, theory and experience indicate we can’t have it both ways, full integration and full autonomy.

Autonomy means that the movement must be truly independent and a free association of all those united around common goals, rather than membership as the result of some oath or other pressure.

Independent thinking alone is not suited to interdependent reality. Independent people who do not have the maturity to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won’t be good leaders or team players. They’re not coming from the paradigm of interdependence necessary to succeed in marriage, family, or organizational reality.