Quotes About Choice

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice... Man has to be a man-by choice; he has to hold his life as a value-by choice; he has to learn to sustain it-by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people its not, but for me its a choice, and you dont get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if its a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesnt matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.

With each choice that you make to align yourself with the energy of your soul, you empower yourself. Authentic power is built up step by step, choice by choice. It cannot be meditated or prayed into being. It must be earned.

In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice (or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot - and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.

Today, despite all of the gains we have made, neither men nor women have real choice. Until women have supportive employers and colleagues as well as partners who share family responsibilities, they don't have real choice. And until men are fully respected for contributing inside the home, they don't have real choice either.

Given a choice between life and death, choose life. Given a choice between right and wrong, choose what's right. And given a choice between a terrible truth and a beautiful lie, choose the truth every time.

Do you know of any more overwhelming and humbling expression for God's condescension and extravagance towards us human beings than that He places Himself, so to say, on the same level of choice with the world, just so that we may be able to choose; that God, if language dare speak thus, woos humankind - that He, the eternally strong one, woos sapless humanity? Yet, how insignificant is the young lover's choice between her pursuers by comparison with this choice between God and the world.

And what? What's the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say: "Tut-tut, what at botch that was"? Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll chose as we think they should?

My choice is what I choose to do and if I'm causing no harm it shouldn't bother you. Your choice is who you choose to be and if you're causin' no harm, then your alright with me.

The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!

Today in America, unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice. I have no use for those - regardless of their political party - who hold some vain and foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when organized labor was huddled, almost as a hapless mass. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.

What are the proper grounds for joy? Is it circumstance which will determine the stature of my spirit? Ah, no. It is choice. It is always a choice - in the face of any event - for joy.

When I look back on the past two decades of my journey today, I guess many people would interpret my artistic practice as a kind of cross-media attempt. I have indeed tried many different kinds of media over the past 20 years and collaborated in many different ways with people from many different fields. However, I like to understand this process as a kind of compensation for having once lost my "right of choice," an exercise of free choice and taking responsibility for any consequences that might result from it. To be honest, it's a bit of a paranoid act.

It took me a really long time to decide who I want my circle to be and who I want to surround myself with. Once you make that choice, that is where I feel like I have built my strength. This is my life choice. These are the people that make me feel good about me, and that I love and adore and will do anything for.

I am an eternal optimist. Being happy is a choice. And you can make that choice every day, if you want to.

Every decision to act is an intuitive one. The challenge is to migrate from hoping it's the right choice to trusting it's the right choice.

A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the costumes and make-up, the actors' reading of a line or emphasis of a word, the choice of lens and the pace of the cutting - these are all part of the translation.

I think that to believe is to acknowledge that it's a choice in that present tense and that doubt is always an option. You’re not dealing with a fact like one plus one equals two—I’m gonna choose to believe that. It’s kind of one of those things where you are choosing to believe that someone loves you. That is always going to be your choice. So for me, I think that’s what makes the faith that I have volatile and explosive and dangerous and troubling. That’s what most of my songs are about.

The choice to follow love through to its completion is the choice to seek completion within ourselves. The point at which we shut down on others is the point at which we shut down on life. We heal as we heal others, and we heal others by extending our perceptions past their weaknesses. Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who that person is. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness, we don’t really know what love is. Forgiving others is the only way to forgive ourselves, and forgiveness is our greatest need.

It occurred to me that when a person chooses certain behaviors, they have complete, 100% control over their choices. But once the behavior is chosen, therein lies the extent of the effects of that choice. One has 0% control over what happens to them or to their body as a result of that choice. You can choose how you respond to the consequences, but control is relinquished. Choose carefully!

When I take photographs, my body inevitably enters a trancelike state. Briskly weaving my way through the avenues, every cell in my body becomes as sensitive as radar, responsive to the life of the streets... If I were to give it words, I would say: "I have no choice... I have to shoot this... I can't leave this place for another's eyes... I have to shoot it... I have no choice." An endless, murmuring refrain.

With every experience, you alone are painting your own canvas, thought by thought, choice by choice.

We are both burdened and blessed by the great responsibility of the will - the power of choice. Our future is determined, in large part, by the choices we make now. We cannot always control our circumstances, but we can and do choose our response to whatever arises. Reclaiming the power of choice, we find the courage to live fully in the world.

There are some people in this world that believe being gay is a choice. It's not a choice, we're born this way.

But now I wonder--what if everyone is pretty much the same and it's just a thousand small choices that add up to the person you are? No good or evil, no black and white, no inner demons or angels whispering the right answers in our ears like it's some cosmic SAT test. Just us, hour by hour, minute by minute, day by day,making the best choices we can. The thought is horrifying. If that's true, then there's no right choice. There's only choice.

America's all about freedom of choice, and I really hope that in the future we still have a great choice of vehicles.

We have a choice. We can seek for the bad in others. Or we can make peace and work to extend to others the understanding, fairness, and forgiveness we so desperately desire for ourselves. It is our choice; for whatever we seek, that we will certainly find.

A failure to learn about Satan's plan for man here on earth would be fatal to the full exercise of free agency. The reason for this lies in the fact that . . . free agency is the opportunity to choose between good and evil. To intelligently make such a choice one must understand the alternatives-both of them. To the extent one is ignorant of these alternatives, to that same extent he has not made a complete choice. Until a person understands Satan's plan, he can never be certain he does not believe in it and is not helping to carry it out.

They used us as an excuse to go mad and then blamed it on us. Gandhi says create and preserve the image of your choice. The image of my choice is not Beatle George - those who want that can go and see Wings. Why live in the past? Be here now.

With death comes a choice. And death is a choice.

For indeed you have a choice. You can flee and hide, and wait to be found. You can live out your days in terror, without meaning. Or you can take the harder choice, and you can save them.

Life's tricky for women because they have to make more choices than men. And yes, choice is good, but boy, you better be an expert choice-maker.

Having no children had been a kind of choice up to the moment when, from a choice, it became a sadness.

When artists connect to a system because they want to make a living, it's their own choice. In fashion, designers don't have that choice. I know everybody mentions Azzedine Alaïa, but he's been going for a long time in the system - showing to people, selling to clients - and I think it's admirable how he's transformed it into his own system in a way, but it's still a system.

What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing. —Archibald MacLeish

We do three things, three things, friendship with God, friendship with one another, and open friendship for the sake of the world. Here's what we mean when we say fiendship with God: We believe that all of this relationship with God starts with God, with his choice of us. We believe that salvation happens as soon as we say "yes" to God. "God I receive you, I receive your choice" and we respond with our entire lives. Welcome to salvation at that point.

You have to edit the material. That assumes that some kind of a mind is operating in relation to the material. Not all minds are the same. Every aspect of filmmaking requires choice. The selection of the subject, the shooting, editing and length are all aspects of choice.

What kind of choice is it, really, when motherhood forces you into a delicate balancing act -- not just between work and family, as the equation is typically phrased, but between your premotherhood and postmotherhood identities? What kind of choice is it when you have to choose between becoming a mother and remaining yourself?

Ojibwe prophecy speaks of a time during the seventh fire when our people will have a choice between two paths. The first path is well worn and scorched. The second path is new and green. It is our choice as communities and as individuals how we will proceed.

Man is unique in that he has plans, purpose and goals which require the need for criteria of choice. The need for ethical value is within man whose future may largely be determined by the choice he make

Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.

My key to living an inspired life involves Embracing my history, Understanding the function of expectations and gently learning to have none; Recognizing the power of attentive and conscious choices. In all circumstances I acknowledge this, IN ALL THINGS AND ALL WAYS, I HAVE CHOICE. My choice resides in my perspective. While I certainly do not control climate and markets and roadways and others, I do control myself and my response to all those circumstances. I do indeed.

We live in a self-organizing and self-correcting universe. For every problem, there is a potentially miraculous solution. A closed heart deflects the miracle, while an open heart brings it forth....In every moment, we make a choice between the heavenly awareness of our connection to all living things, or the hell of the delusion that we are separate and alone. The mind will manufacture according to our choice; whichever we choose, we will seem to experience.

[I]t is more than slightly ironic that Democrats, the fiercely pro-choice party, reserve free choice for aborting a fetus, while denying it for such matters as choosing your child's school or joining a union.

I've done a lot of independent travelling, which hasn't been the best career choice, but it's been a really great life choice.

...a choice had to be made when your husband said something unkind. Specifically: be cruel, be strong, or sulk. 'Be cruel' by saying an unkind thing back. 'Be strong' by choosing not to mind. But to do this, you have to use up a piece of your love. You have to shave off enough of the love to forgive. After a while, the piece might grow back, but sometimes not. And if you shave off all the soft curves, you'll be left with a sharp-edged love. 'Sulk' by sulking. Sulking is simply delaying the choice to be cruel or strong.

Chosen motherhood is the real liberation. The choice to have a child makes the whole experience of motherhood different, and the choice to be generative in other ways can at last be made, and is being made by many women now, without guilt.

Every man builds his world in his own image; he has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice. If he abdicates his power, he abdicates the status of man, and the grinding chaos of the irrational is what he achieves as his sphere of existence—by his own choice.