Quotes About Choice

Der Mensch kann wohl tun was er will, aber er kann nicht wollen was er will.

A man cannot serve two masters: so it is either reason or the scriptures. - On Religion

A human being does at all times only what he wills, and yet does it necessarily. But that rests on the fact that he is what he wills : for out of what he is everything that he does at any time follows necessarily.

What people commonly call fate is mostly their own stupidity.

Cada um será tanto mais sociável quanto mais pobre for de espírito, e, em geral, mais vulgar (o que torna o homem saudável é justamente a sua pobreza interior). Pois, no mundo, não se tem muito além da escolha entre solidão e a vulgaridade.

For if the choice were given to any individual between his own destruction and that of the world, I do not need to say where it would land in the great majority.

You can do what you will: but at each given moment of your life you can will only one determined thing and by no means anything other than this one.

Conscience accompanies every act with the comment: You should act differently, although its true sense is: You could be other than you are.

Under presupposition of free will each human action would be an inexplicable miracle - an effect without cause. And if one dares the attempt to make such a liberum arbitrium indifferentiae imaginable to oneself, one will soon become aware that here the understanding quite genuinely comes to a standstill: it has no form for thinking of such a thing.

To will [Wollen]! Great words! pointer on the scales of the Last Judgment, the bridge between heaven and hell! Reason is not the light shining from heaven, but only a sign post set up by ourselves and directed to the chosen goal, that it may show us the direction when the goal itself is concealed. But one can direct it to hell just as well to heaven.

Ä°nsan yapabileceklerini isteyerek yapmal? ve çekmesi gereken ac?y? isteyerek çekmelidir. -Gnomici poetae Graeci

There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity. All young people should be taught now to put up with loneliness ... because the less man is compelled to come into contact with others, the better off he is.

There is in the world only the choice between loneliness and vulgarity.

It is an aristocratic feeling that nourishes the tendency to seclusion and solitude. All rascals are sociable, pitifully so. But that a human being is of a nobler kind first shows itself in the fact that he does not delight in others, but more and more prefers solitude to their company and then gradually, over the course of the years, comes to understand that, apart from rare exceptions, there is only one choice in the world, that between solitude and commonness.

A man can do what he wants but not want what he wants.

You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.

Herkes istediÄŸini yapabilir, ama istediÄŸini isteyemez

Could the completed life course of such a man turn out in any respect, even the smallest, in any happening, any scene, differently from the way it did? – No! is the consistent and correct answer.

El hombre puede, acaso, hacer lo que quiere; pero no puede querer lo que quiere.

A man can surely do what he wills to do, but he cannot determine what he wills.

Das Schicksal mischt die Karten, und wir spielen.

If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.

El azar reparte las cartas pero nosotros las jugamos.

Das Schicksal mischt die Karten, wir spielen.