Quotes About Choice

You want to go back to my house the long way? he asked. Or the shortcut? You have to be cold- Long way, I replied. The long way, for sure.

If you want, he said with a shrug. It's up to you. If you want to be lifted, I'll lift you.' Oh yes, Elsa said, refilling all the glasses. There will be lifting. Clio realized that she hadn't spoken through any of this. It was all Elsa lifting and carrying the conversation, twirling around with it. Sure, Clio said. Pick up me up. Aidan tipped his head in concession, his green eyes lit up for once. You want me to pick you up, I guess I can't refuse.

What I've got to offer you is your life.' 'It's not yours to offer...

A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality.

What I mean is, what makes people unhappy is not too little choice, but too much, said Mitchell Layton. having to decide, always to decide, torn every which way all of the time. Now in a society of pattern, a man could feel safe. Nobody would come to him all the time pestering him to do something. Nobody would have to do anything. What I mean is, of course, except working for the common good.

This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero.

It is my mind which thinks, and the judgement of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth. It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of history." --Atlas Shrugged

No, you do not have to live as a man; it is an act of moral choice. But you cannot live as anything else—and the alternative is that state of living death which you now see within you and around you, the state of a thing unfit for existence, no longer human and less than animal, a thing that knows nothing but pain and drags itself through its span of years in the agony of unthinking self-destruction.

Nobody stays in this valley except by a full, conscious choice based on a full, conscious knowledge of every fact involved in his decision. Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatever.

Wynand's face was more than the face of a stranger: a stranger's face is an unapproached potentiality, to be opened if one makes the choice and effort; this was a face known, closed and never to be reached again.

He lost, for that moment, all the days and dogmas of his past; his concepts, his problems, his pain were wiped out; he knew only—as from a great, clear distance—that man exists for the achievement of his desires, and he wondered why he stood here, he wondered who had the right to demand that he waste a single irreplaceable hour of his life, when his only desire was to seize the slender figure in gray and hold her through the length of whatever time there was left for him to exist.

The Romanticists did not present a hero as a statistical average, but as an abstraction of man's best and highest potentiality, applicable to and achievable by all men, in various degrees, according to their individual choices.

Should the soul vanish from the earth, the motors would stop, because that is the power which keeps them going—not the oil under the floor under her feet, the oil that would then become primeval ooze again—not the steel cylinders that would become stains of rust on the walls of the caves of shivering savages—the power of a living mind—the power of thought and choice and purpose.

concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek.

Now I'll give you a choice. That train is going to be run. You have no choice about that. But you can choose whether it's going to be run by one of your men or not. If you choose not to let them, the train will still run, if I have to drive the engine myself.

To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living.

Reason is your means of survival — so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to think or not to think..'.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit." (Atlas Shrugged)

Man's life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose . If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man—for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.

For the We must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within a man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and an unspeakable lie.

The act of thinking is man's primary act of choice.

When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend. You want him to become a robot.