quotations about choice
The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice--their choice.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
speech, Oct. 9, 1956
The choosy sometimes get the dregs.
JAPANESE PROVERB
Understanding the power of choice is of infinite importance. We were created with the power of individuality, with the freedom to think and to act. Since humanity's creation, though, this freedom has been under attack. To some, freedom is a threat or problem that must be controlled. Freedom, these would say, is a nuisance that leads to trouble. Others, though, see this freedom or power as essential and have gone to great lengths to preserve it, even to the point of shedding their own blood in its defense. This freedom, the power of choice, is the issue of a great cosmic, universal controversy that has lasted for millennia. Even though incredible effort and resources have been devoted to eradicating this freedom, it has been preserved. Choice survives.
JIM ROY
Soul Shapers
There's small choice in rotten apples.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Taming of the Shrew
The man who can't make a choice makes a choice.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Stand at the crossroads if you will, but if you'll not choose, I'll move on without you.
JACQUELINE CAREY
Kushiel's Dart
Far too often the choices reality proposes are such as to take away one's taste for choosing.
JEAN ROSTAND
The Substance of Man
Choice, therefore, is the test and measure of us; for whoso cannot have everything must needs pitch his choice, and he will pitch it as his nature is, high or low.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
I believe the measure of a man isn't just the road he's traveled; it's the choices he's made along the way.
JOE BIDEN
acceptance speech, Aug. 27, 2008
Where there is force there is no choice.
JOHN JORTIN
Sermons on Different Subjects
I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
There is a time when we must firmly choose the course we will follow, or the relentless drift of events will make the decision.
HERBERT V. PROCHNOW
attributed, Wise Words and Quotes
Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The measure of choosing well is whether a man likes what he has chosen.
CHARLES LAMB
Essays of Elia
Did it ever occur to you that you're so caught up in trying to make the right choice that you've never stopped to consider the possibility that there may not be a right choice, or a wrong choice, just a bunch of choices?
JACK McPHEE
"A Winter's Tale", Dawson's Cree
Any time choice is restricted in some way, there is bound to be someone, somewhere, who is deprived of the opportunity to pursue something of personal value.
BARRY SCHWARTZ
The Paradox of Choice
You've got a lot of choices. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you're not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.
STEVEN D. WOODHULL
attributed, Quote Unquote
We make our decisions, and then our decisions turn around and make us.
F. W. BOREHAM
attributed, The Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations
For our choices take our dimensions in two ways: First, by the kind of them. We may select paltry and showy things, ease, pleasures which have no mind in them, cheap influence with our fellows. Whether there be baseness in this, or whether, as the Stoics would have it, it be only such a savage ignorance as would choose a glass bead before a book, the reckoning is the same as to coarse grain in character; and they who publish this measure of themselves do, indeed, like heavy-bearded cowards, assume but "nature's excrement" to make themselves respected. If we set our choice so high that perforce the low must be left, so high as beauty, generosity, strength of mind, stores of knowledge, memories of the hungry fed, the forsaken cheered, the fallen lifted, humane works watched and reenforced--it is no more than to elect the things which mark us as men.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
A complete stranger has the capacity to alter the life of another irrevocably. This domino effect has the capacity to change the course of an entire world. That is what life is; a chain reaction of individuals colliding with others and influencing their lives without realizing it. A decision that seems miniscule to you, may be monumental to the fate of the world.
J. D. STROUBE
Caged by Damnation