Quotes About Choice

God loves you. Now what are you going to do about it ?

The future could go this way, that way. The future's futures have never looked so rocky. Don't put money on it. Take my advice and stick to the present. It's the real stuff, the only stuff, it's all there is, the present, the panting present.

There are not many road signs in Russia, you know.' He laughed. 'If you don't know where the road goes, you shouldn't be on it.'" — Arkady Renko from Gorky Park

In its factical existence, any particular Dasein either 'has the time' or 'does not have it'. It either 'takes time' for something or 'cannot allow any time for it'. Why does Dasein 'take time', and why can it 'lose' it? Where does it take time from? How is this time related to Dasein's temporality?

Die Wiederholung des Möglichen ist weder ein Wiederbringen des Vergangenen noch ein Zurückbinden der Gegenwart an das Überholte. Die Wiederholung lässt sich, einem entschlossenen Sichentwerfen entspringend, nicht vom Vergangenen überreden, um es als das vormals Wirkliche nur wiederkehren zu lassen. Die Wiederholung erwidert viel mehr die Möglichkeit der dagewesenen Existenz.

What is decision anyway?

Understanding the call, Dasein listens to its ownmost possibility of existence. It has chosen itself.

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.

Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively

Svaki ?ovjek mora odlu?iti ho?e li hodati u svjetlu kreativnog altruizma ili u tami destruktivnog egoizma.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

MAN DOES WHAT HE CAN, CHANCE DOES WHAT IT WILL.

Our negative ceasing to possess must be accompanied by a positive choosing to be generous.

God had already told Adam and Eve what was right and what was wrong. But Satan said, in essence, "That's his opinion; you're entitled to your own opinion—you can make your own decisions about what is right and wrong.

I do believe in fate, Anne-not the blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy.

I am free, you see, she said, to love or to withhold love. Love and dependence need no longer be the same thing to me. I am free to love. that is why I love you and it is the way I love you. If you have come here, Kit, because you think you owe me something, because you believe I might crumble without your protection, then go away again with my blessing and find happiness with someone else. I love you, he said again.

I do not believe there is right or wrong, he said. there is only doing what one must do under given circumstances and living with the consequences and weaving every experiences, good and bad, into the fabric of one's life so that ultimately one can see the pattern of it all and accept the lessons life has taught.

She had never believed in fate. She still did not. It would be nonsense of freedom of will and choice, and it was through such freedom that we worked our way through life and learned what we needed to learn. But sometimes, it seemed to her, there was something, some sign, to nudge one along in a certain direction. What one chose to do with that nudge was up to that person.

I am free, you see, she said, to love or to withhold love. Love and dependence need no longer be the same thing to me. I am free to love. That is why I love you, and it is the way I love you.

Life is a precious possession...It is what one makes of it. - Charity Duncan

It was hard to leave. But it was impossible to stay. He was leaving from choice because he was young and energetic and adventurous and had long wanted to carve a life of his own. He was going to new possibility, new dreams. But he was leaving behind places and people. And though, being young, he was sure he would see them all again some day, he knew too that many years might pass before he did so. It was not easy to leave.

Do you believe that sometimes life points out a way for us to follow even if it does not force us into taking that particular path?

I believe," he said gently, "we all have a perfect right to make ourselves unhappy if that is what we freely choose. But I am not sure we have the right to allow our own unhappiness to cause someone else's. The trouble with life sometimes is that we are all in it together.

It is the human condition. No one escapes, even those who may appear to others to live charmed lives. But we all have the choice of whether to be defined by the negatives in our lives or to make of our present and future and our very selves what we want them to be.