|
|
|
|
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
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
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
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
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
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
Exercising your own Freedom of Choice in a way that limits anyone else's Freedom of Choice is a direct crime against the Purpose of the Universe.
THOMAS J. CHALKO, The Freedom of Choice
Choice is a determinant in personal development ... by my free acts I am making myself.
BERNARD LONERGAN, Understanding and Being
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
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
Any time choice is restricted in some way, there is bound to be someone, somewhere, who is deprived of the opportunity to pursue something of personal value.
BARRY SCHWARTZ, The Paradox of Choice
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
Choice is the declaration by self that a certain ideal of self shall be realized.
Choice is nothing in itself; everything depends on what one is able to choose.
HAROLD O. J. BROWN, "The Language of Life"
There's small choice in rotten apples.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Taming of the Shrew
Understanding the power of choice is of infinite importance. We were created with the power of individuality, with the freedom to think and to act. Since humanity's creation, though, this freedom has been under attack. To some, freedom is a threat or problem that must be controlled. Freedom, these would say, is a nuisance that leads to trouble. Others, though, see this freedom or power as essential and have gone to great lengths to preserve it, even to the point of shedding their own blood in its defense. This freedom, the power of choice, is the issue of a great cosmic, universal controversy that has lasted for millennia. Even though incredible effort and resources have been devoted to eradicating this freedom, it has been preserved. Choice survives.
The difficulty in life is the choice.
GEORGE MOORE, The Bending of the Bough
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"
Choice is what enables us to tell the world who we are and what we care about.
BARRY SCHWARTZ, The Paradox of Choice
When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have.
OWEN WISTER, The Virginian
|
|
|
