quotations about choice
The measure of choosing well is whether a man likes what he has chosen.
CHARLES LAMB
Essays of Elia
Between two stools one sits on the ground.
FRANCOIS RABELAIS
Gargantua
A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Proud Highway
Where there is force there is no choice.
JOHN JORTIN
Sermons on Different Subjects
What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?
JIM BUTCHER
White Night
It's hard to make a choice between two blind dogs.
IRISH PROVERB
A complete stranger has the capacity to alter the life of another irrevocably. This domino effect has the capacity to change the course of an entire world. That is what life is; a chain reaction of individuals colliding with others and influencing their lives without realizing it. A decision that seems miniscule to you, may be monumental to the fate of the world.
J. D. STROUBE
Caged by Damnation
He that will not when he may,
When he will he shall have nay.
ROBERT BURTON
Anatomy of a Melancholy
For our choices take our dimensions in two ways: First, by the kind of them. We may select paltry and showy things, ease, pleasures which have no mind in them, cheap influence with our fellows. Whether there be baseness in this, or whether, as the Stoics would have it, it be only such a savage ignorance as would choose a glass bead before a book, the reckoning is the same as to coarse grain in character; and they who publish this measure of themselves do, indeed, like heavy-bearded cowards, assume but "nature's excrement" to make themselves respected. If we set our choice so high that perforce the low must be left, so high as beauty, generosity, strength of mind, stores of knowledge, memories of the hungry fed, the forsaken cheered, the fallen lifted, humane works watched and reenforced--it is no more than to elect the things which mark us as men.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
You have a choice. Live or die.
Every breath is a choice.
Every minute is a choice.
Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Survivor
The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.
FLORA WHITTEMORE
attributed, Quote Unquote
Choice is what enables us to tell the world who we are and what we care about.
BARRY SCHWARTZ
The Paradox of Choice
A victim of collision on the open sea
Nobody ever said that life was free
Sank, swam, go down with the ship
But use your freedom of choice
DEVO
"Freedom of Choice"
The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice.
ELIZABETH GILBERT
Committed
Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
It is only the superior man who can make a right choice.
CONFUCIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
When in doubt of what is right, consult your pillow overnight.
MEXICAN PROVERB
The difficulty in life is the choice.
GEORGE MOORE
The Bending of the Bough
Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Sexing the Cherry
We all imagine ourselves the agents of our destiny, capable of determining our own fate. But have we truly any choice in when we rise, or when we fall, or does a force larger than ourselves bid us our direction? Is it evolution that takes us by the hand, does science point our way, or is it God who intervenes keeping us safe?
MOHINDER SURESH
"Chapter Two 'Don't Look Back'", Heroes