quotations about choice
If decisions were a choice between alternatives, decisions would come easy. Decision is the selection and formulation of alternatives.
KENNETH BURKE
Towards a Better Life
If you limit your choice 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
The Path of Least Resistance
The immediate antecedent of choice, when it is normal, is the whole present self. In choice then the mind simply determines itself from one state to another. If we represent the two states by a and b and the activity of choice by x, every case of normal choice will involve the self-moving of the mind from a to b through function x. The causal antecedent of x is, therefore, the mind in state a, while the consequent is the mind in state b, and x is the activity or movement in which the transition is made. Normal choice is, therefore, self-movement and not movement by other. Another conclusion that follows from the above analysis is that fatalism rests on a false idea of the relation of a man to his own choice. The fatalist is one who denies his own agency in volition. The only type of determination, in his view, is determination by other. He, therefore, makes a false diremption between himself and the determining causes of his action and conceives himself to be a mere puppet in the hands of God, Nature, Fate, or whatever his Absolute may chance to be. But if the immediate antecedent of choice is the chooser himself, and if choice is self-determination, the presupposition of fatalism falls to the ground; for, however a man's choice may be determined, it cannot be that he is a mere spectator of the drama, or that he is run by alien forces that act without his own assent.
ALEXANDER T. ORMOND
"Freedom and Psycho-Genesis"
One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
foreword, You Learn by Living
Life does not give itself to one who tries to keep all its advantages at once. I have often thought morality may perhaps consist solely in the courage of making a choice.
LÉON BLUM
Marriage
Of course. That's what people do in a disordered world, a world of freedom and choice: they leave when they want. They disappear, they come back, they leave again. And you are left to pick up the pieces on your own.
LAUREN OLIVER
Requiem
When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed.
PHILIP PULLMAN
The Amber Spyglass
The obvious choice is usually a quick regret.
AMERICAN PROVERB
There's small choice in rotten apples.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Taming of the Shrew
That's the thing about freewill: Every decision we make is a choice against something as much as it is for something else.
REBECCA SERLE
When You Were Mine
If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.
RUSH
"Freewill"
Your capacity to say "No" determines your capacity to say "Yes" to greater things.
E. STANLEY JONES
attributed, Distilled Wisdom
No choice is also a choice.
YIDDISH PROVERB
I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.
T. S. ELIOT
The Rock
Choice is free, and it is opposed to force and constraint, and a man is said to choose those things which he likes, which he loves, which his soul inclines to, when he is carried to them, not by the compulsion of an external principle, but by his own propension and inclination.
THOMAS MANTON
Sermon CLXXXVI
In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future.
JODI PICOULT
Change of Heart
Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.
MEROVINGIAN
The Matrix Reloaded
No one learns to make right decisions without being free to make wrong ones.
KENNETH SOLLITT
attributed, The Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations
What happens if your choice is misguided,
You must try to correct it
But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t?
Then you must find a way to live with it.
LIBBA BRAY
A Great and Terrible Beauty
Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh