Quotes About Decision-making

Pick your fights like you pick your nose: with complete awareness of where you are.

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.

No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).

Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insuffcient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually.

The choices humans makes should be active rather than passive. In making personal choices we affirm our autonomy. A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, Frankl writes, bbut man is ultimately self determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment - he has made of himself..

To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: "Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?" There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one's opponent.

Vive como si ya estuvieras viviendo por segunda vez y como si la primera vez ya hubieras obrado tan desacertadamente como ahora estás a punto de obrar

never permit the patient to pass to the doctor the responsibility of judging.

Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!'' It

make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.

learned meaninglessness." He himself remembered a therapist who said, "George, you must realize that the world is a joke. There is no justice, everything is random. Only when you realize this will you understand how silly it is to take yourself seriously. There is no grand purpose in the universe. It just is. There's no particular meaning in what decision you make today about how to act."13

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

Live as if you living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.

Der er et vist mål af frihed til enhver, selv om det kun gælder valget af hårfarve.

I was trying to tell her that, if she found herself in a situation where she could save her life only at the price of yielding sexually, she should not feel inhibited out of any consideration for me. By giving her, so to speak, an absolution in advance, I was hoping to spare myself the guilt if such an inhibition might lead to her death.

M]an is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he succumbs to conditions or defies them. In other words, man is ultimately self determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

M]an is by no means a product of inheritance and environment. Man ultimately decides for himself! And in the end education is just education towards the ability to decide.

Keegi ei tohiks kohut mõista enne, kui ta on endale kõigutamatu aususega vastanud, kas ta ise oleks säärases olukorras kindlalt toiminud teisiti.

Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now! It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man's sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended.

Between stimulus and response, there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.

He hesitated for a split second, then told himself not to think. "I'd rather go down swinging," he muttered as he shut the door. If he survived this little ordeal he'd have to ask Lewis if talking to yourself was a symptom of losing your mind.

He paid his people for their intellect and their opinions, not to play it safe until the answer was obvious.