Quotes About Dilemma

This wasn't a position she wanted to be in. And yet . . . yet she knew that she was going to do it anyway.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit." (Atlas Shrugged)

You have been paying blackmail, not for your vices, but for your virtues.

One does not bargain over inches of evil.

one cannot deal with pure evil, with the naked, full-conscious evil that neither has nor seeks justification.

I hadn't known what it was like, to want it, until I saw you for the first time. Do you know what it's like? To want it? The lowest of all desires - as my answer to the highest I've met. You trusted me, didn't you? To think of you as you deserve. Don't you suppose I know how much I've betrayed? I want you - and may I be damned for it! - Atlas Shrugged

Be it a highwayman who confronts a traveler with the ultimatum: 'Your money or your life,' or a politician who confronts a country with the ultimatum: 'Your children's education or your life,' the meaning of that ultimatum is: 'Your mind or your life'—and neither is possible to man without the other. "If there are degrees

In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube.

If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive?

There's a way to solve every dilemma of that kind, Mr. Rearden. Check your premises.

I can't live a life torn between that which exists—and you.

A "compromise" does not consist of doing something one dislikes, but of doing something one knows to be evil.

Jim appeared to her suddenly as a man who had tried to find a middle course between two poles—Meigs and herself—and who was now seeing that his course was narrowing and that he was to be ground between two straight walls.

Morality is a code of black and white. When and if men attempt a compromise, it is obvious which side will necessarily lose and which will necessarily profit. Such are the reasons why—when one is asked: "Surely you don't think in terms of black-and-white, do you?"—the proper answer (in essence, if not in form) should be: "You're damn right I do!

Do we consider that anything goes, that we have no responsibility towards others but only for satisfying our needs? Well, that is the crux of the great novels xxx - the question of doing what is right or what we want to do.

Well, that is the crux of the great novels," Manna added, "like Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina, or James's for that matter—the question of doing what is right or what we want to do.

Wanting to be in politics but not of it.

Suppose that preventive care uncovered some condition that would require agonizing treatments or sacrifices on my part - disfiguring surgery, radiation, drastic lifestyle limitations. Maybe these measures would add years to my life, but it would be a painful and depleted life that they prolonged.

Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side.

we sang in church Tata Nzolo ! Which means Father in Heaven or Father of Fish Bait depending on just how you sing it, and that pretty well summed up my quandry.

The urge to lie is produced by the contradictions in our lives. We are made to declare love for our country, while it tramples our rights and dignity.

Father had not spoken up yet. My theory was he didn't know who to jump on first, the insulting Underdowns or his cussing wife, so he just stood there brewing like a coffeepot.

I'd tried all the options with Mom and had only one place left to go on her. Cold.

No, you shouldn't have come here. But you are here, so yes, you should be here. There are more words in the world then yes and no.