Quotes About Choice

extensive analysis requires more time, energy, and motivation. As a consequence, its impact on our decisions is limited by the rigor it requires. If we don't have the wherewithal (time, capacity, will) to think hard about a choice, we're unlikely to deliberate deeply.

According to the theory, whenever free choice is limited or threatened, the need to retain our freedoms makes us desire them (as well as the goods and services associated with them) significantly more than previously.

Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures.

Obviously, horse-race bettors are not alone in their willingness to believe in the correctness of a difficult choice, once made.

It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one, "because," that made the difference.

I needed to determine whether those reasons were genuine or mere justifications for my decision to stop there. So I asked myself the crucial question, "Knowing what I know about the real price of this gasoline, if I could go back in time, would I make the same choice again?" Concentrating on the first burst of impression I sensed, I received a clear and unqualified answer. I would have driven right past.

It is one of the secrets of happiness that you know which battles you can win and which you can't.

Forget what you may have learned about the choice between the "free market" and government. A market cannot exist without a government to organize and enforce it. The important question is whom the market has been organized to serve.

the underlying issue has nothing to do with a hypothetical choice between the "free market" and government. Decisions must be made about whether a particular company or group of companies has "excessive" market power.

How do we come to choose what it is that we spend our days doing? Would we choose it again if we could? Did we choose it today, or has it simply carried us along somehow?

Given the choice to photograph models and celebrities or landscapes, I will take landscapes every time. Landscapes don't insult you, are always on time for the photo shoot, and, never talk back!

What was your life anyway but the tiny black spot of what you've done against the infinite white of possibility?

Life is like sailing. You can use any wind to go in any direction.

We have a choice every day — to act on yesterday's good intentions or get an early start on tomorrow's regrets.

Be the master of your fate, be the captain of your soul, but do not hesitate, should the chance befall you, to be the slave of your heart.

If you knew that hope and despair were paths to the same destination, which would you choose?

Shall I redirect my life's journey because down some sideroad might be some trifle I'm entitled to?

There is an ongoing battle between conscience and self-interest in which, at some point, we have to take sides.

If you can't forgive and forget, pick one.

There are memories I choose not to live with, but we hang out at the same bar.

Life starts out as partly destiny and partly free will, but then you have kids, and it's all destiny.

If I choose abstraction over reality, it is because I find it the lesser chaos.

You can awaken each day to obligations you never chose — or you can decide now to choose them.

If you could travel back in time to the present moment, what would you do differently?