Quotes About Dilemma

Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.

Por qué no tentar suerte con la enfermera si la amo?

Sensazione meravigliosa. Di quando il destino finalmente si schiude, e diventa sentiero distinto, e ormai inequivocabile, e direzione certa. Il tempo interminabile dell'avvicinamento. Quell'accostarsi. Si vorrebbe non finisse mai. Il gesto di consegnarsi al destino. Quella è un'emozione: Senza più dilemmi, senza più menzogne. Sapere dove. E raggiungerlo. Qualunque sia, il destino.

You know the answer to that as well as I do. Psychologically it's much easier to swallow a pill than pull the trigger, especially if you're not so keen on the idea to begin with.

To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.

The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought.

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed." / What then? Is the reward of virtue bread?

Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.

Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.

Not doing anything can be worse than doing the wrong thing.

You want to be the one making the decisions. Sitting on the fence is one thing, but what happens when the fence is taken away from you? Do you jump off joyfully or fall crashing to the floor?

The trade-off seems like a no-brainer. Would you rather be bribed during your hospital stay with made-to-order omelets or would you rather be, for example, not dead?

I didn't want to go forward—I didn't like what I saw there. But I couldn't go back, either, because I tried that and it didn't work. And you can't spend your life on a tightrope.

The moral high ground to which I aspired had turned into a slippery slope.

Today we ought to be able to see first that Booker T. Washington faced a situation in which he was seeking desperately for a way out, and he could see no way out except capitulation.

Boxers risk a lot in the ring. That's one of the things that attracts me to it. You want to see a knockout but I also really don't want to see people get hurt. It's this constant dilemma when I'm watching boxing. The only times I get nervous is watching a really big fight or when my brother is playing. I get to the stage where I'm actually shaking.

One of my favorite things in books is watching someone make the mistake. You know it's going to happen. You keep thinking: 'Don't do it!' But of course they're going to do it. It's riveting. You learn through them that it's okay. It's the ecstatic fall, where you watch someone make that terrible decision, and there's such pleasure in it.

We cannot sacrifice our humanity in the name of security - or we risk losing both.

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.

If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent, then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see, there is simply no escape.

My mother begged doctors to end her life. She was beyond the physical ability to swallow enough of the weak morphine pills she had around her. When she knew she was dying I promised to make sure she could go at a time of her choosing, but it was impossible. I couldn't help.

At pivotal moments throughout history, there have always been grey areas, and there likely will be in the future. Courage now lies not in the black and white, as in the past, but in the grey.