Quotes About Choice

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Perhaps its inevitable, perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all and impersonating what one is.

I said to myself, 'I want to die decently'.

He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death, he would never end.

People are like dice. We throw ourselves in the direction of our own choosing.

An individual chooses and makes himself.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

I have no religion, but if I were to choose one, it would be that of Shariati's.

man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, in other respect is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The Existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.

I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.

Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose.

We will freedom for freedom's sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.

All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 'to retain my freedom.' I should myself have thought,' said Jacques, 'that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one's responsibilities. But that, no doubt, is not your view.

If I didn't try to assume responsibility for my own existence, it would seem utterly absurd to go on existing.

Perhaps it's inevitable; perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all, or impersonating what one is. That would be terrible,' he said to himself: 'it would mean that we were duped by nature.

Freedom is what we do with what is done to us

The plight of modern man is that he is condemmed to be free.

Oppressed with countless little daily cares, he had waited... For an act. A free, considered act; that should pledge his whole life, and stand at the beginning of a new existence.

Well, you're free without wanting to be,' he explained, 'it just happens so, that's all. But Mathieu's freedom is based on reason.' 'I still don't understand,' said Lola, shaking her head. 'Well, he doesn't care a curse about his apartment: he lives there just as he would live anywhere else, and I've got the feeling that he doesn't care much about his girl. He stays with her because he must sleep with someone. His freedom isn't visible, it's inside him.

to do something is to create existence

Happiness is not doing what you want but wanting what you do.

If... if I didn't try to get my life moving on my own account, I should think it just absurd to go on living.' A look of smiling obstinacy had come into Marcelle's face. 'Yes, yes - it's your vice.' 'It's not a vice. It's how I'm made.' 'Why aren't other people made like that, if it isn't a vice?' 'They are, only they don't know it.

I know very well that I don't want to do anything: to do something is to create existence—and there's quite enough existence as it is.

No doctrine is more optimistic [than existentialism], since it declares that man's destiny lies within himself.