Quotes about choice

I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.

— A Course In Miracles

Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation.

— James Allen

Every choice moves us closer to or farther away from something. Where are your choices taking your life? What do your behaviors demonstrate that you are saying yes or no to in life?

— Eric Allenbaugh

The world isn't interested in the storms you encountered, but whether or not you brought in the ship.

— Raul Armesto

If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.

— Margaret Atwood

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

— Richard Bach

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

— Francis Bacon

Man?s power of choice enables him to think like an angel or a devil, a king or a slave. Whatever he chooses, mind will create and manifest.

— Frederick Bailes

It's so hard when I have to, And so easy when I want to.

— Sondra Anice Barnes

Each person designs his own life, freedom gives him the power to carry out his own designs, and power gives the freedom to interfere with the designs of others.

— Eric Berne

Even as a tortoise draws in its limbs, the wise can draw in their senses at will.

— Bhagavad Gita

Refuse the evil, and choose the good. [Isaiah 7:15]

— Bible

I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: Therefore choose life. [Deuteronomy 30:19]

— Bible

Thus we see that the all important thing is not killing or giving life, drinking or not drinking, living in the town or the country, being unlucky or lucky, winning or losing. It is how we win, how we lose, how we live or die, finally, how we choose.

— R. H. Blyth

I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character we choose. Besides, practice forms a man to anything.

— James Boswell

Other people's opinion of you does not have to become your reality.

— Les Brown

You don't have to buy from anyone. You don't have to work at any particular job. You don't have to participate in any given relationship. You can choose

— Harry Browne

Every street has two sides, the shady side and the sunny. When two men shake hands and part, mark which of the two takes the sunny side; he will be the younger man of the two.

— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life.

— Leo Buscaglia

Instead of looking at life as a narrowing funnel, we can see it ever widening to choose the things we want to do, to take the wisdom we've learned and create something.

— Liz Carpenter

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road -- the one less traveled by -- offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.

— Rachel Carson

You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.

— Deepak Chopra

You are either part of the solution or part of the problem.

— Eldridge Cleaver

Our generation, like the one before us, must choose. Without the threat of the Cold War, without the pain of economic ruin, without the fresh memory of World War II's slaughter, it is tempting to pursue our private agendas -- to simply sit back and let history unfold. We must resist the temptation.

— Bill Clinton

On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us --ah! what a dream, to live in that! --the other stifles us at the first breath.

— Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs. Self-conceit often regards it as a sign of weakness to admit that a belief to which we have once committed ourselves is wrong. We get so identified with an idea that it is literally a pet notion and we rise to its defense and stop our eyes and ears to anything different.

— John Dewey

I like to be a free spirit. Some don't like that, but that's the way I am.

— Princess of Wales Diana

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice.

— Wayne Dyer

You can't choose up sides on a round world.

— Wayne Dyer

Anything inside that immobilizes me, gets in my way, keeps me from my goals, is all mine.

— Wayne Dyer

Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.

— Tryon Edwards

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can lay down and die, or you can get up and fight, but that's it -- there's no turning back.

— Jon English

It is your own convictions which compels you; that is, choice compels choice.

— Epictetus

Most of life is choices, and the rest is pure dumb luck.

— Marian Erickson

It is not something I must do but something I want to do

— James Fixx

You can do one of two things; just shut up, which is something I don't find easy, or learn an awful lot very fast which is what I tried to do.

— Jane Fonda

He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end.

— Harry Emerson Fosdick

Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedom -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

— Viktor E. Frankl

A human being is a deciding being.

— Viktor E. Frankl

The key to your universe is that you can choose.

— Frederick (Carl) Frieseke

The way to activate the seeds of your creation is by making choices about the results you want to create. When you make a choice, you activate vast human energies and resources, which otherwise go untapped. All too often people fail to focus their choices upon results and therefore their choices are ineffective. If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.

— Robert Fritz

The first thing I do in the morning is to make my bed and while I am making up my bed I am making up my mind as to what kind of a day I am going to have.

— Robert Frost

In the choice between changing one's mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.

— Jerry Garcia

No life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it.

— Ellen Glasgow

You are the person who has to decide. Whether you'll do it or toss it aside; You are the person who makes up your mind. Whether you'll lead or will linger behind. Whether you'll try for the goal that's afar. Or just be contented to stay where you are.

— Edgar A. Guest

It is enough that we set out to mold the motley stuff of life into some form of our own choosing; when we do, the performance is itself the wage.

— Learned Hand

He that cannot decidedly say, No, when tempted to evil, is on the highway to ruin. He loses the respect even of those who would tempt him, and becomes but the pliant tool and victim of their evil designs.

— Joel Hawes

You are everything that is, your thoughts, your life, your dreams come true. You are everything you choose to be. You are as unlimited as the endless universe.

— Shad Helmstetter

It is always your next move.

— Napoleon Hill

Watch what you choose to do. For instance, someone might want you to smoke. Never forget that I told you -- don't do it. Say no. That can of beer that somebody wants you to try, don't do it. Don't you ever do it. That drug that someone might want you to use, don't touch it. Stay away from it. It can destroy you.

— Gordon B. Hinckley

Seeing the light is a choice, not seeing the light is no choice.

— Doug Horton

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that in itself is a choice.

— William James

If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained... it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will.

— William James

We do pretty much whatever we want to.

— Philip Johnson

Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.

— Alan Keightley

Bright lights cast dark shadows when shone from only one direction.

— David Kelley

You can choose to be lazy or you can choose to be ambitious. Stop to think about it again. Don't you do your own choosing?

— J. Martin Kohe

Let us choose to believe something good can happen.

— J. Martin Kohe

Any person who recognizes this greatest power... the power to choose. Begins to realize that he is the one that is doing the choosing and that friends, although they mean well, cannot do his choosing for him, nor can his relatives. Consequently, he develops real self-confidence based upon his own ability, upon his own action, and upon his own initiative.

— J. Martin Kohe

The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose.

— J. Martin Kohe

When we acknowledge that all of life is sacred and that each act is an act of choice and therefore sacred, then life is a sacred dance lived consciously each moment. When we live at this level, we participate in the creation of a better world. [The Circle is Sacred]

— Scout Cloud Lee

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.

— Abraham Lincoln

No one ever went broke by saying no too often.

— Harvey Mackay

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.

— Groucho Marx

A man is too apt to forget that in this world he cannot have everything. A choice is all that is left him.

— Harry Mathews

There is no shame in finding someone else to be attractive, or good company. Even if they don't like you, there is still no shame. If you happen to be fond of someone, and they're not fond of you, it's OK.. You don't have to wait and see if they'll love you back. You can announce it.. Joy in life comes from expressing ourselves, in taking risks and jumping in. Everyone is not going to like you. But you can like who you like.

— Andrew Matthews

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

— H. L. Mencken

Before my accidents, there were ten thousands things I could do. I could spend the rest of my life dwelling on the things that I had lost, but instead I chose to focus on the nine thousand I still had left.

— W. Mitchell

I knew that I did not have to buy into society's notion that I had to be handsome and healthy to be happy. I was in charge of my spaceship and it was my up, my down. I could choose to see this situation as a setback or as a starting point. I chose to begin life again.

— Warren Mitchell

Choose your love, Love your choice.

— Thomas S. Monson

Every person has free choice. Free to obey or disobey the Natural Laws. Your choice determines the consequences. Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.

— Alfred A. Montapert

The difficulty in life is the choice.

— George Moore

When a defining moment comes along, you can do one of two things. Define the moment, or let the moment define you.

— Tin Cup Movie

It is the moment of evolutionary truth for the race, and what man does with that moment will be more important than the events of the previous millenium.

— Charles Muses

We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us -- how we can take it, what we do with it -- and that is what really counts in the end. How to take the raw stuff of life and make it a thing of worth and beauty -- that is the test of living.

— Joseph Fort Newton

People are where they are because that is exactly where they really want to be -- whether they will admit that or not.

— Earl Nightingale

To every man there openeth A way, and ways, and a way. And the high soul climbs the high way, And the low soul gropes the low: And in between, on the misty flats, The rest drift to and fro. But to every man there openeth A high way and a low, And every man decideth. The way his soul shall go.

— John Oxenham

The more equally attractive two alternatives seem, the harder it can be to choose between them -- no matter that, to the same degree, the choice can only matter less.

— Edward Fredkin's Paradox

The highest order of mind is accused of folly, as well as the lowest. Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

— Blaise Pascal

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

— Neil Peart

Choice strengthens all.

— Neal Prescot

As simple as it sounds, we all must try to be the best person we can: by making the best choices, by making the most of the talents we've been given.

— Mary Lou Retton

Inhabit ourselves that we may indeed do what we want to do.

— Mary Caroline Richards

Look for your choices, pick the best one, then go with it.

— Pat Riley

You are now at a crossroads. This is your opportunity to make the most important decision you will ever make. Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don't think about who you have been. Who are you now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully.

— Anthony Robbins

You see, it's never the environment; it's never the events of our lives, but the meaning we attach to the events -- how we interpret them -- that shapes who we are today and who we'll become tomorrow.

— Anthony Robbins

We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish.

— Anthony Robbins

We are the only beings on the planet who lead such rich internal lives that it's not the events that matter most to us, but rather, it's how we interpret those events that will determine how we think about ourselves and how we will act in the future.

— Anthony Robbins

A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away.

— Gene Roddenberry

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

— Eleanor Roosevelt

I think there is a choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.

— Muriel Rukeyser

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.

— Zen Saying

You cannot be anything if you want to be everything.

— Solomon Schechter

The perfect way is without difficulty, for it avoids picking and choosing. Only when you stop liking and disliking will all be clearly understood. Be not concerned with right or wrong, for the conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind.

— Seng-Ts'an

Every single moment of your life you must choose from a number of alternatives. What you choose determines where you will end up.

— Shall Sinha

I am not a sound bite person. I prefer to run at the mouth.

— Marina Sirtis

If you want to sing out, sing out, and if you want to be free, be free, cause there's a million ways to be, you know that there are...

— Cat Stevens