quotations about choice
If the eye be the chooser, the delight is short; if the will, the end is want; if reason, the effect is reason.
THEOPOMPUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
A man picks a wife about the same way an apple picks a farmer.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Managing the power of choice, with all its creative and spiritual implications, is the essence of the human experience. All spiritual teachings are directed toward inspiring us to recognize that the power to make choices is the dynamic that converts our spirits into matter, our words into flesh. Choice is the process of creation itself.
CAROLINE M. MYSS
Anatomy of the Spirit
But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.
JOHN STEINBECK
East of Eden
Choice is a determinant in personal development ... by my free acts I am making myself.
BERNARD LONERGAN
Understanding and Being
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could.
ROBERT FROST
"The Road Not Taken"
I've had choices
Since the day that I was born
There were voices
That told me right from wrong
If I had listened
No I wouldn't be here today
Living and dying
With the choices I made
GEORGE JONES
"Choices", The Cold Hard Truth
When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and positive. But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.
BARRY SCHWARTZ
The Paradox of Choice
When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man.
ANTHONY BURGESS
A Clockwork Orange
Choices determine character.
BRANDON MULL
Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary
Choice is born out of opposites, and the duality of the second chakra is forever challenging us to make choices in a world of opposing sides, of positive and negative energy patterns. Every choice we make contributes a subtle current of our energy to our universe, which is responsive to the influence of human consciousness.
CAROLINE M. MYSS
Anatomy of the Spirit
Deliberate choices are the only sacred things in the universe. Everything else is just hydrogen.
JAMES ALAN GARDNER
Ascending
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
The choices we make, make us.
CASSANDRA CLARE
Lady Midnight
Look at the choices you have, as opposed to the choices that have been taken away from you. Because in those choices, there are whole worlds of strength and new ways to look at things.
MICHAEL J. FOX
Good Housekeeping, Apr. 2009
The moment of choice is for me very serious, less on account of the rigorous pondering of the alternatives, and of the multitude of thoughts that attack to each separate link, than because there is a danger afoot that at the next moment it may not be in my power to make the same choice, that something has already been lived that must be lived over again. For it is a delusion to think one can keep one's personality blank, or that one can in any real sense arrest and interrupt personal life. The personality already has interest in the choice before one chooses, and if one postpones the choice the personality makes the choice unconsciously, or it is made by the dark powers within it. Then when at last the choice is made, if, as I remarked earlier, one has not gone into complete dissolution, one discovers that there is something that must be done over again, that must be retracted, and that is often very difficult.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
Human life [is] ... a process of filling in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait.
ERIC BERNE
Games People Play
And we all make our choices
Like a blind man feels his way
URIAH HEEP
"Choices", Innocent Victim
The inability to make a decision has often been passed off as patience.
ANONYMOUS
A choice is the root of all morality. Without choice, one can have no moral code. In a vacuum bereft of alternatives, there can be no values. And without values, there can be no reason for a code of ethics. What gives our lives meaning is which alternatives we choose. If we have no options, if we can take but one path, we are by definition slaves.
DAVE GALANTER
Troublesome Minds