Quotes About Choice

what you risk reveals what you value...

I thought about the dog and was suddenly very sad; sad about her death, for my death, for all the inevitable dying that comes with change. There's no choice that doesn't mean a loss.

Why be happy when you could be normal ?

Die Freiheit des Menschen liegt nicht darin, dass er tun kann, was er will, sondern dass er nicht tun muss, was er nicht will.

La liberté n'est dans aucune forme de gouvernement, elle est dans le coeur de l'homme libre ; il la porte partout avec lui. L'homme vil porte partout la servitude. L'un serait esclave à Genève, et l'autre libre à Paris.

L'homme vraiment libre ne veut que ce qu'il peut, et fait ce qu'il lui plaît.

Renoncer à sa liberté c'est renoncer à sa qualité d'homme

The oftener the choice fell upon old men, the oftener it became necessary to repeat it, and the more the trouble of such repetitions became sensible; electioneering took place; factions arose; the parties contracted ill blood; civil wars blazed forth; the lives of the citizens were sacrificed to the pretended happiness of the state; and things at last came to such a pass, as to be ready to relapse into their primitive confusion

Nikdy jsem nemyslil, že svoboda ?lovÄ›ka by záležela v tom, aby dÄ›lal, co chce, nýbrž spíÅ¡, aby nikdy nedÄ›lal, co nechce, a to je svoboda, jíž jsem se vždy dovolával, ?asto ji zachovával a pro kterou jsem byl nejvíce svým vrstevník?m k pohorÅ¡ení

What you get is what you get. What you DO with what you get, though...that's more the point, wouldn't you say -Doon's Father

What you get is what you get. What you do with what you get, though . . . that's more the point, wouldn't you say?

Please just let us choose and get it over with.

God deals us all different hands. How we play 'em is up to us.

It's really not that hard to put food on the table if that's what you decide to do.

If I owned hell and west Texas, he said, I do believe I'd sell west Texas and live in hell.

You were free to choose enslavement, but the choice was a free one only if you knew what your alternatives were.

She's the one married to Dad. That was her choice, I said. She needs to be firmer, lay down the law for Dad instead of getting hysterical all the time. What Dad needs is a strong woman. A caryatid wouldn't be strong enough for Dad. What's that? Pillars shaped like women, Lori said. The ones holding up those Greek temples with their heads. I was looking at a picture of some the other day, thinking, Those women have the second toughest job in the world.

Slow down, Sallie." Tom puts a hand on my arm, and then in a gentler voice says, "Your aunt will be okay. We'll see to that." "She wouldn't have got hurt if I'd been there." "Sallie, I don't know if that's true, and you don't either. But I do know you couldn't stay in Hatfield when the Duke sent for you. You had to come back. You had no choice.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.

Man is what he wills himself to be.

You and me are real people, operating in a real world. We are not figments of each other's imagination. I am the architect of my own self, my own character and destiny. It is no use whingeing about what I might have been, I am the things I have done and nothing more. We are all free, completely free. We can each do any damn thing we want. Which is more than most of us dare to imagine.

Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.