Quotes: Choice

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect
yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.
- Robert Fritz


Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be
waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
William Jennings Bryan (1860 - 1925)



A man is too apt to forget that in this world he cannot have everything. A choice is
all that is left him.
H. Mathews



Be very circumspect in the choice of thy company. In the society of thine equals thou shalt enjoy more pleasure; in the society of thy superiors thou shalt find more profit. To be the best in the company is the way to grow worse.
Francis Quarles (1592 - 1644)



You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924)



Because you are in control of your life. Don't ever forget that. You are what you are because of the conscious and subconscious choices you have made.
Barbara Hall, A Summons to New Orleans, 2000




You've got to make a conscious choice every day to shed the old - whatever 'the old' means for you.
Sarah Ban Breathnach


I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890)


With every experience, you alone are painting your own canvas, thought by thought, choice by choice.
Oprah Winfrey (1954 - ), O Magazine



I believe love is primarily a choice and only sometimes a feeling. If you want to feel love, choose to love and be patient.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, December 16, 2002



Hope doesn't come from calculating whether the good news is winning out over the bad. It's simply a choice to take action.
- Anna Lappe, O Magazine, June 2003



One thing is clear to me. You can't know everything you'd like to know. You can't do everything you'd like to do. You can't read everything you'd like to read. You must hold onto some things and let go of others. Learning to make that choice is one of the big lessons of this life.
- Real Live Preacher, Real Live Preacher.com weblog, September 9, 2003



It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, 1999




A person has three choices in life. You can swim against the tide and get exhausted, or you can tread water and let the tide sweep you away, or you can swim with the tide, and let it take you where it wants you to go.
- Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Northern Lights, 1993



I believe the choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.
Oprah Winfrey (1954 - ), O Magazine, December 2003




It's just a ride and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money, a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.
- Bill Hicks



Everything you do in life, every choice you make, has a consequence. When you do things without thinkin', then you ain't makin' the choice. The choice is makin' you.
- Mark Steven Johnson, Ghostrider, 2007




The lessons this life has planted in my heart pertain more to caring than crops, more to Golden Rule than gold, more to the proper choice than to the popular choice.
Kirby Larson, Hattie Big Sky, 2006



Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
- Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011), Stanford Commencement Adress, 2005




That's what building a body of work is all about. It's about the daily labor, the many individual acts, the choices large and small that add up over time, over a lifetime to a lasting legacy. It's about not being satisfied with the latest achievement, the latest gold star, because the one thing I know about a body of work is that it's never finished. It's cumulative. It deepens and expands with each day you give your best. You may have setbacks and you may have failures, but you're not done. You haven't even started.
- Barack Obama (1961 - ), Arizona State Commencement Speech, 2009



Extreme exercise doesn’t save you from poor food choices. It can be difficult to exercise and erase away that chocolate cake or pizza pie. It doesn’t work that way.
- Jennifer Hudson, I Got This: How I Changed My Ways and Lost What Weighed Me Down,
2012



I am completely in charge of the choices I make about what I am doing to lose weight and get healthy. And you know what? We all have this power. Don’t be angry with me for something good I’ve done for myself. Be angry with yourself for not having the courage to do the same in your own life.
Jennifer Hudson, I Got This: How I Changed My Ways and Lost What Weighed Me Down,
2012




You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories.
John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, 2012




How could it be? She watched, observed, reflected, and finally determined that this was not a case of fortitude or of resignation only. A submissive spirit might be patient, a strong understanding would supply resolution, but here was something more; here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from nature alone. It was the choicest gift of Heaven.
- Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Persuasion, 1818






Taking responsibility gives us power and control, because when we recognize the relationship between our choices and their consequences, then the next time we don’t like a consequence we can make a different choice.
Julie A., M.A. Ross and Judy Corcoran, Joint Custody with a Jerk: Raising a Child with an Uncooperative Ex, 2011



A coward turns away, but a brave man's choice is danger.
Euripides (484 BC - 406 BC), Iphigenia in Tauris, circa 412 B.C.





As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.
Noam Chomsky (1928 - ), in a television interview




I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891



The more alternatives, the more difficult the choice.
- Abbe' D'Allanival



Let bravery be thy choice, but not bravado.
Menander (342 BC - 292 BC)





We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904 - 1991), The Times (1982)



By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand.
- George W. Bush (1946 - ), Speech to the United Nations, September 12, 2002
 


That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.
- Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982), Atlas Shrugged



Golf isn't a game, it's a choice that one makes with one's life.
Charles Rosin, Northern Exposure, Aurora Borealis, 1990


Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other.
- Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982), Atlas Shrugged




A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)




A pessimist, confronted with two bad choices, chooses both.
Jewish Proverb


Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.
- J. K. Rowling


I have often thought morality may perhaps consist solely in the courage of making a choice.
- Leon Blum (1872 - 1950)


Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy.
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire



Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is
right and what is easy.
- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: The Movie



The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.
- Milan Kundera (1929 - ), Immortality



That man can destroy life is just as miraculous a feat as that he can create it, for life is the miracle, the inexplicable. In the act of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature. Thus, the ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.
- Erich Fromm (1900 - 1980), The Sane Society



Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate.
- Anthony Burgess (1917 - 1993)



Ambition, the soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than gain which darkens him.
- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), Antony and Cleopatra, Act III, sc.1



Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains.
- Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers: A Novel



Besides, what matters, when it comes to self-control, isn't so much willpower as vision-the ability to see the future, so that the long-run consequences of our short-run choices are vividly clear. In that sense, our shortcomings in this arena are really failures of imagination.
- Daniel Akst, We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess, 2011


Our choices add up; each one influences others, and cumulatively a series of delightful short-term choices can leave us much worse off in the long run.
- Daniel Akst, We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess, 2011



Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
- Abraham Flexner (1866 - 1959), Universities, part 3, 1930



The United States does not have a choice as to whether or not is will or will not play a great part in the world. Fate has made that choice for us. The only question is whether we will play the part well or badly.
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)



Americans, indeed all free men, remember that inn the final choice, a soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's chains.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)



Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults in the first.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)



Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006)



The difficulty in life is the choice.
- George Moore, The Bending of the Bough, [1900], act IV



Liberty is the right to choose. Freedom is the result of the right choice.
- Anonymous



If you choose not to decide -- you still have made a choice!
- Neil Peart





You can choose a ready guide
In some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears
and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose free will.

- RUSH, Free Will



Honor isn't about making the right choices. It's about dealing with the consequences.
- Midori Koto



The forces of good and evil are working within and around me, I must choose, and in a free will universe I do have a choice.
- Sovereign



In all things there are three choices: Yes, No & no choice, except in this -- I either choose the truth or I am deceit.
- Sovereign



The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.
George Eliot (1819 - 1880)


The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created--created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.
- John Schaar, futurist



Men make the mistake of thinking that because women can't see the sense in violence, they must be passive creatures. It's just not true. In one important way, at least, men are the passive sex. Given a choice, they will always opt for the status quo.
They hate change of any kind, and they fight against it constantly. On the other hand, what women want is stability, which when you stop to think about it is a very different animal.
- Eric Lustbader, The Kaisho



There's always something to suggest that you'll never be who you wanted to be. Your choice is to take it or keep on moving.
- Phylicia Rashad


We will lower the tax burden on middle-class Americans by asking the very wealthy to pay their fair share. Middle-class taxpayers will have a choice between a children's tax credit or a significant reduction in the income tax rate.
- Bill Clinton and Al Gore, "Putting People First", 1992




Science would be ruined if (like sports) it were to put competition above everything else, and if it were to clarify the rules of competition by withdrawing entirely into narrowly defined specialties. The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.
- Benoit Mandelbrot



I find the question "Why are we here?" typically human. I'd suggest "Are we here?" would be the more logical choice.
- Leonard Nimoy



...that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
- C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963), from _Mere_Christianity_





Some rainy winter Sundays when there's a little boredom, you should always carry a gun. Not to shoot yourself, but to know exactly that you're always making a choice.
- Lina Wertmuller




The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly important thing to people.
- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King


A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)




Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)


The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work or daytime television.
- Unknown



It is a mistake to speak of a bad choice in love, since as soon as a choice exists, it can only be bad.
- Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922)



In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
- Peter Ustinov (1921 - 2004)



Destiny...is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved
- William Jennings Bryan (1860 - 1925)



The choice before us is plain: Christ or chaos, conviction or compromise, discipline or disintegration. I am rather tired of hearing about our rights and privileges as American citizens. The time is come - it now is - when we ought to hear about the duties and responsibilities of our citizenship. America's future depends upon her accepting and demonstrating God's government.
- Reverend Peter Marshall, on being elected Chaplain of the U. S. Senate in January 1947





The birthplace of success for each person is in his Inner-Consciousness. The Inner-Consciousness will use whatever it is given. If constructive thoughts are planted positive outcomes will be the result. Plant the seeds of failure and failure will follow. And since the only real freedom a person has is the choice of what thoughts he will feed to his Inner-Consciousness he is totally responsible for the outcomes he gets.
- Sidney Madwed



As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us.
- A. J. Toynbee



Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.
- William A. Foster



If we could raise one generation with unconditional love, there would be no Hitlers. We need to teach the next generation of children from Day One that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.
- Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross


There is no legitimacy on earth but in a government which is the choice of the nation.
- Joseph Bonaparte


To decide, to be at the level of choice, is to take responsibility for your life and to be in control of your life.
- Abbie M. Dale



Every person has free choice. Free to obey or disobey the Natural Laws. Your choice determines the consequences. Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.
- Alfred A. Montapert


I think there is a choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.
- Muriel Rukeyser