Quotes About Choice

We have moved away from traditional Judeo-Christian values toward a worldview that lets us self-select values based on whether they serve our self-interests. Like a child loose in a candy store, we pick our values, we determine our own fate, we captain our own ship.

To say you have no choice is to relieve yourself of responsibility.

But a knife ain't just a thing, is it? It's a choice, it's something you do . A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don't. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again.

And yeah, I know most people would think it weird that two guy friends touch as much as we do, but when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too. This is how we work. I hope you get to choose your family and I hope it means as much to you as mine does to me.

But I don't care what you think, not about these things anyway. If you don't think they're real or important or you think that we'll all grow out of this nonsense, well, that's not really my business. I can't tell you what's real for you. But in return, you can't say what's real for me either. I get to choose. Not you.

Just remember, please, most of that stuff is in the past. It isn't the story I want to tell. At all. You needed to know it, but for the rest of this, I'm choosing my own story. Because if you can't do that, you might as well just give up.

Even when peaceful cooperation is the obvious thing, the only thing that will keep any of us alive- There are still people who won't make that choice.

Then at the top of the hill, the road forks. Which just figures. "You gotta be kidding." I say. One part of the road goes left, the other goes right. (Well, it's a "Fork" ain't it?)

Everything that's happened has brought me here, to this place, with this knife in my hand, and something worth saving.

Cept for Ben, who I can't describe much further without seeming soft and stupid and like a boy, so I won't, just to say that I never knew my pa, but if you woke up one day and had a choice of picking one from a selecshun, if someone said, here, then, boy, pick who you want, then Ben wouldn't be the worst choice you could make that morning.

Better the devil you know. I wonder why the only choice is twixt two devils, tho.

And then I hear the terrible, terrible scream that of course is the girl getting caught and that's the choice made, ain't it?

To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that's not how a person with integrity acts.

There's always a choice," Viola says by my side. "Oh, people like to say that," the Mayor says. "It makes them feel better.

But when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too.

What if it'd been Simone down there instead of Todd?" I say. And Simone is all over his Noise, his deep feelings for her, feelings I don't think are returned. "You're right," he says, "I don't know. I hope I'd make the right choice, but Viola it is a choice. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that's not how a person with integrity acts.

There's so much proscription in the lives of young people, and it's so vital to have a place that says, look, here are the doors onto the world and amazingly, you're free to choose any one you like. - Patrick Ness on Libraries

The thing is, Todd, people don't really want freedom, no matter how much they might bleat on about it.

You did this to me," I say, still trembling. "You put it in my head and made me–" "I did no such thing," he says. "I merely showed you the path. You walked down it all by yourself.

We must do this. It has been prophesied.' You relieve yourself of choice. Relieve yourself of consequences. Torture me, harm me, kill me. Do all these things, but do not pretend there is a must. That is how evil is rationalised.

Pero un cuchillo no es solamente un objeto, ¿verdad? Es una elección entre alternativas. Sí o no, cortar o no cortar, matar o no matar. Un cuchillo recoge la decisión que tomes y la convierte en un hecho real, tangible, que ya no puede remediarse.

I can't tell you what's real for you. But in return, you can't say what's real for me either. I get to choose. Not you.

But you can't make war personal," I say, "or you'll never make the right decisions." "And if you didn't make personal decisions, you wouldn't be a person.

And everything I might have been, the different futures I might have taken, all my different lives and deaths that existed in their endless possibilities were extinguished in a single repetition of her three words. "You will hunt." When you predict the future, when you do so strongly and you cling to it, how much of that future do you then cause to happen? And all that might have been was long, long gone.