quotations about choice
Choice there is not, unless the thing which we take to be so is in our power, that we might have refused it. If the fire consume the stable, it choseth not so to do, because the nature thereof is such that it can do no other.
RICHARD HOOKER
Ecclesiastical Polity
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
We make our decisions, and then our decisions turn around and make us.
F. W. BOREHAM
attributed, The Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations
When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have.
OWEN WISTER
The Virginian
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
Between two stools one sits on the ground.
FRANCOIS RABELAIS
Gargantua
Life is not made up of a single moment, it's made up of a gazillion moments. What defines us is the choice we make in the next moment, and the one after that.
HENRY SPENCER
"Murder?...Anyone?...Anyone?...Bueller?", Psych
What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?
JIM BUTCHER
White Night
Choice is what enables us to tell the world who we are and what we care about.
BARRY SCHWARTZ
The Paradox of Choice
It is only the superior man who can make a right choice.
CONFUCIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
There are moments in our lives when we find ourselves at a crossroads. Afraid. Confused. Without a roadmap. The choices we make in those moments can define the rest of our days.
LUCAS SCOTT
"Things I Forgot at Birth", One Tree Hill
The difficulty in life is the choice.
GEORGE MOORE
Bending of the Bough
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
How could a choice be called free when its consequences are unknown at the time of our choosing?
KENNETH BURKE
Towards a Better Life
The difficulty in life is the choice.
GEORGE MOORE
The Bending of the Bough
The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.
FLORA WHITTEMORE
attributed, Quote Unquote
He that will not when he may,
When he will he shall have nay.
ROBERT BURTON
Anatomy of a Melancholy
To choose, is to will one thing before another; and to will, is to bend our souls to the having or doing of that which they see to be good.
RICHARD HOOKER
Ecclesiastical Polity
He who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides never decides.
HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL
attributed, Wise Words and Quotes
A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Proud Highway