Quotes about choice
page 21

“The issue over there being classes seems more a question of convenient conceptual scheme; the issue over there being centaurs, or brick houses on Elm Street, seems more a question of fact. But I have been urging that this difference is only one of degree, and that it turns upon our vaguely pragmatic inclination to adjust one strand of the fabric of science rather than another in accommodating some particular recalcitrant experience. Conservatism figures in such choices, and so does the quest for simplicity.”

Willard van Orman Quine Two Dogmas of Empiricism

"Two Dogmas of Empiricism"
From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (1953)

Question, Science, Housing

“When we, Constantine and Licinius, emperors, had an interview at Milan, and conferred together with respect to the good and security of the commonweal, it seemed to us that, amongst those things that are profitable to mankind in general, the reverence paid to the Divinity merited our first and chief attention, and that it was proper that the Christians and all others should have liberty to follow that mode of religion which to each of them appeared best; so that that God, who is seated in heaven, might be benign and propitious to us, and to every one under our government. And therefore we judged it a salutary measure, and one highly consonant to right reason, that no man should be denied leave of attaching himself to the rites of the Christians, or to whatever other religion his mind directed him, that thus the supreme Divinity, to whose worship we freely devote ourselves, might continue to vouchsafe His favour and beneficence to us. And accordingly we give you to know that, without regard to any provisos in our former orders to you concerning the Christians, all who choose that religion are to be permitted, freely and absolutely, to remain in it, and not to be disturbed any ways, or molested. And we thought fit to be thus special in the things committed to your charge, that you might understand that the indulgence which we have granted in matters of religion to the Christians is ample and unconditional; and perceive at the same time that the open and free exercise of their respective religions is granted to all others, as well as to the Christians. For it befits the well-ordered state and the tranquillity of our times that each individual be allowed, according to his own choice, to worship the Divinity; and we mean not to derogate aught from the honour due to any religion or its votaries.”

Constantine the Great (274–337) Roman emperor

As translated in The Ante-Nicene Fathers (1886) edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Vol. 7, p. 320 http://books.google.com/books?id=ko0sAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA320 Variant translation: When I, Constantine Augustus, as well as I Licinius Augustus fortunately met near Mediolanum [Milan], and were considering everything that pertained to the public welfare and security, we thought —, among other things which we saw would be for the good of many, those regulations pertaining to the reverence of the Divinity ought certainly to be made first, so that we might grant to the Christians and others full authority to observe that religion which each preferred; whence any Divinity whatsoever in the seat of the heavens may be propitious and kindly disposed to us and all who are placed under our rule. And thus by this wholesome counsel and most upright provision we thought to arrange that no one whatsoever should be denied the opportunity to give his heart to the observance of the Christian religion, or of that religion which he should think best for himself, so that the Supreme Deity, to whose worship we freely yield our hearts, may show in all things His usual favor and benevolence. Therefore, your Worship should know that it has pleased us to remove all conditions whatsoever, which were in the rescripts formerly given to you officially, concerning the Christians and now any one of these who wishes to observe Christian religion may do so freely and openly, without molestation. We thought it fit to commend these things most fully to your care that you may know that we have given to those Christians free and unrestricted opportunity of religious worship. When you see that this has been granted to them by us, your Worship will know that we have also conceded to other religions the right of open and free observance of their worship for the sake of the peace of our times, that each one may have the free opportunity to worship as he pleases; this regulation is made we that we may not seem to detract from any dignity or any religion. As translated in The Early Christian Persecutions (1897) by Dana Carleton Munro http://books.google.com/books?id=eoQTAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA29 Edict of Milan (313)

God, Religion, Way, Exercises

“But after this show with Barkha, they stopped taking my calls and till date, I don’t know what made an advanced negotiation stop without any further discussion. I found it strange and I had no idea then that suddenly I had created lots of Gudsa Usendis who didn’t want me to succeed with this film. They were using all their tactics to destroy me. I had only two choices: speak up or shut up. I spoke up.”

Vivek Agnihotri (1973) director

Urban Naxals (2018)

Idea

“Trump would have us believe that these are our only two choices: We can either have smash-and-grab capitalism, where so many hands in the cookie jar has resulted in so many government scandals, and where the top 1 percent have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, or we can have what’s happening in Venezuela, where the economy has collapsed and humanitarian and political crises have ensued...”

Krystal Ball (1981) American journalist

Wealth

“Before we as individuals are even conscious of our existence we have been profoundly influenced for a considerable time (since before birth) by our relationship to other individuals who have complicated histories, and are members of a society which has an infinitely more complicated and longer history than they do (and are members of it at a particular time and place in that history); and by the time we are able to make conscious choices we are already making use of categories in a language which has reached a particular degree of development through the lives of countless generations of human beings before us.... We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

As quoted in Popper (1973) by Bryan Magee

Making love, History, Birth, Time

“If you please to give me leave I shall give you the ground of what I know to be true. Being much troubled to see the falseness of the constitution of the church of England, I had like to have turned separatist; whereupon I kept a day of solemn humiliation and pondering of the thing; this scripture was brought unto me — he that denies Jesus Christ to be come in the flesh is antichrist — This I considered of and in considering found that the papists did not deny him to be come in the flesh nor we did not deny him — who then was antichrist?... The Lord knows that I could not open scripture; he must by his prophetical office open it unto me.... I bless the Lord, he hath let me see which was the clear ministry and which the wrong. Since that time I confess I have been more choice and he hath let me to distinguish between the voice of my beloved and the voice of Moses, the voice of John Baptist and the voice of antichrist, for all those voices are spoken of in scripture. Now if you do condemn me for speaking what in my conscience I know to be truth I must commit myself unto the Lord.”

Anne Hutchinson (1591–1643) participant in the Antinomian Controversy

Trial and Interrogation (1637)

Truth, Time, Christ, Falseness

“Of course if we make good things, it is not only to the credit of science; it is also to the credit of the moral choice which led us to good work. Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to use it. Such power has evident value — even though the power may be negated by what one does with it.I learned a way of expressing this common human problem on a trip to Honolulu. In a Buddhist temple there, the man in charge explained a little bit about the Buddhist religion for tourists, and then ended his talk by telling them he had something to say to them that they would never forget — and I have never forgotten it. It was a proverb of the Buddhist religion:To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.What then, is the value of the key to heaven? It is true that if we lack clear instructions that enable us to determine which is the gate to heaven and which the gate to hell, the key may be a dangerous object to use.But the key obviously has value: how can we enter heaven without it?”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

The Value of Science (1955)

Bad luck, Making love, Religion, Way

“This was reckless, for if the political choice for the preservation of the mosque were based on the historical non-existence of the medieval temple at the site, then the eventual discovery of such a temple would justify a contrario the replacement of the mosque with a restored temple. At least in theory, but the Marxists were confident that their opponents would never get the chance to press this point. Under the prevailing power equation, they expected to get away with a plain denial of history rather than a mere insistence on divorcing history from politics.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Found and Lost: The Ayodhya Evidence (2003) https://web.archive.org/web/20071009120710/http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.org/articles/ayodhya/foundnlost.html 2000s

Confidence, History, Chance, Self-confidence

“Statism is a system of institutionalized violence and perpetual civil war. It leaves men no choice but to fight to seize political power -- to rob or be robbed, to kill or be killed. … Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.”

Ayn Rand book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Source: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966), Ch. 2 "Roots of War", p. 36-37

Men, War, Fight, Country

“Áñez’s choice of cabinet showed no signs that she intended to reach across the country’s deep political and ethnic divide. Her senior ministers includes prominent members of the business elite from Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s most populous city and a bastion of opposition to Evo Morales.”

Jeanine Áñez (1967) President of Bolivia

About

Business, Country

“Today freedom also means the freedom to hate, it means the freedom to say anything, it means the freedom to disparage people, to dehumanize people, to believe in the culture of cruelty, to believe that kindness is not a virtue but a liability. Freedom has been extended into a discourse of violence and hate, which is really part of a larger cultural apparatus that has so undermined the relationship between freedom and justice, freedom and equality, freedom and social responsibility that those terms drop out and freedom becomes in a sense a liability with respect to what a democratic socialist country might look like. The other side of this is that there is a really demonic notion of freedom that seems to suggest we’re all equal and we can all make all of the choices that we want — it’s up to us. In other words, it suggests that choice in this one-dimensional sense of market freedom is defined without constraints. So you are free to sleep under a bridge at night, or you’re free to sleep in the Ritz. Well, that’s just nonsense. It seems to me that choice only becomes meaningful when people have the capacity to make real choices. That’s what freedom really is about in an economic and political sense.”

Henry Giroux (1943) American academic

Interview with Media For Us, 2019

Hate, People, Making love, Justice

“PowerPoint is symptomatic of a certain type of bureaucratic environment: one typified by interminable presentations with lots of fussy little bullet-points and flashy dissolves and soundtracks masked into the background, to try to convince the audience that the goon behind the computer has something significant to say. It’s the tool of choice for pointy-headed idiots with expensive suits and skinny laptops who desperately want to look as if they’re in command of the job, with all the facts at their fiddling fingertips, even if Rome is burning in the background. Nothing stands for content-free corporate bullshit quite like PowerPoint. And that’s just scratching the surface…”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 2, “Going Down to Dunwich” (pp. 42-43)

“My diction, my choice of words, is as precise as I can make it. The images that I use, the evocation of the senses, again, relies upon a certain exactitude. You can see how what I did with language as a poet would bleed into what I did as a lawyer, vice-versa…”

Martín Espada (1957) Puerto Rican poet

On how his correlates the language of a poet with practicing law in “The Writer’s Block Transcripts: A Q&A with Martin Espada” https://www.sampsoniaway.org/interviews/2015/12/11/the-writers-block-transcripts-a-qa-with-martin-espada/ in Sampsonia Way (2015 Dec 11)

Making love, Sense

“The theme of choice and the power of culture pops up in my stories often. Before Binti, the biggest example of this is in Who Fears Death when Onyesonwu must face the decision of whether or not to go through a ceremony that required cutting off her clitoris. To many readers, the fact that she even has to think about whether or not to do this is shocking. It’s not shocking to me at all, coming from the culture that I come from where the individual is often secondary to the community…”

Nnedi Okorafor (1974) Nigerian-American writer of fantasy and science fiction

On choice being reconciled with culture in her works in “Interview: A Conversation with Nnedi Okorafor” http://weirdfictionreview.com/2017/02/interview-conversation-nnedi-okorafor/ in Weird Fiction Review (2017 Feb 20) Personal life

Death, Fear, Communication, Thinking

“Birth control - individual choice, safe contraceptive methods, as well as abortions when necessary - is a fundamental prerequisite for the emancipation of women.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Source: Women, Race and Class (1983), Chapter 12, "Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights"

Women, Birth

“I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”

Dylann Roof (1994) American mass murderer

archived 20 June 2015 https://web.archive.org/web/20150620135047/http://lastrhodesian.com/data/documents/rtf88.txt on website registered 9 February 2015, published 21 June 2015 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/us/dylann-storm-roof-photos-website-charleston-church-shooting.html in NYT, original date of authorship unknown

World, Time, Fight, Country

“I just say to everybody in the country, including everyone in Parliament, the fundamental choice is this: Are you going to side with Jeremy Corbyn and those who want to cancel the referendum? Are you going to side with those who want to scrub the democratic verdict of the people - and plunge this country into chaos. Or are you going to side with those of us who want to get on, deliver the mandate of the people and focus with absolute, laser-like precision on the domestic agenda?”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Brexit: Michel Barnier rejects demands for backstop to be axed https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49540681 BBC News (1 September 2019) 2010s, 2019

People, Country

“We need to realise the depth of the problems we face. Unless we get on and do this thing, we will be punished for a very long time. There is a very real choice between getting Brexit done and the potential extinction of this great party.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Tory leadership: Johnson warns party of risk of Brexit 'extinction' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48521389, BBC News, 5 June 2019 2010s, 2019

Problem, Time

“Suffrage is not simply about the right to vote but also about what that represents. The basic and fundamental human right of being able to participate in the choices for your future and that of your community.”

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (1981) American former actress and member by marriage of the British royal family

Since marriage Source: At the celebration of 125 years of women's suffrage in New Zealand http://archive.today/zYlFS

Communication, Future

“There is a misconception that because I have worked in the entertainment industry that this would be something I would be familiar with. But even though I had been on my show for I guess six years at that point, and working before that, I have never been part of tabloid culture. I have never been in pop culture to that degree and lived relatively quiet life, even though I focus so much on my job. So that was a really stark difference out of the gate. And I think we were just hit so hard at the beginning with a lot of mistruths that I made the choice to not read anything, positive or negative, it just didn’t make sense. So instead we focused all of our energies on nurturing our relationship.”

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (1981) American former actress and member by marriage of the British royal family

Engagement interview (November 2017)

Life, Making love, Thinking, Sense

“Standards of better or worse are not illusory or unnecessary. If you hadn’t decided that what you are doing right now was better than the alternatives, you wouldn’t be doing it. The idea of a value-free choice is a contradiction in terms. Value judgments are a precondition for action. Furthermore, every activity, once chosen, comes with its own internal standards of accomplishment. If something can be done at all, it can be done better or worse.”

Jordan Peterson book 12 Rules for Life

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today

Idea

“In hearing of these different possibilities, people sometimes exclaim rashly that there could of course be no thought in a Master’s mind of choosing any but that course which most helps humanity - a remark which greater knowledge would have prevented them from making. We should never forget that there are other evolutions in the solar system besides our own, and no doubt it is necessary for the carrying out of the vast plan of the Logos that there should be adepts working on all the seven lines to which we have referred. Surely the choice of the Master would be to go wherever his work was most needed - to place his services with absolute selflessness at the disposal of the Powers in charge of this part of the great scheme of evolution.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Invisible Helpers (1915), Ch. 17

People, Making love, Knowledge, Help

“Maitreya will present to the world a choice: to continue as we are, in the old, greedy, selfish, very human ways, and destroy ourselves, or to demonstrate at last the divine potential in every person by grasping the realities of life: the fact of the oneness of the soul; of the oneness, therefore, of humanity as a group of souls in incarnation. This will be a revelation for most of humanity.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Awakening of Humanity (2008)

Life, World, Way, Soul

“For too long, perhaps ever since the war, we postponed facing up to fundamental choices and fundamental changes in our society and in our economy. This is what I mean when I say we have been living on borrowed time. For too long this country – all of us, yes this Conference too – has been ready to settle for borrowing money abroad to maintain our standards of life, instead of grappling with the fundamental problems of British industry. Governments of both parties have failed to ignite the fires of industrial growth in the ways that countries with very different political and economic philosophies have done.”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (28 September 1976), quoted in James Callaghan, Time and Chance (Collins, 1987), p. 425
Prime Minister

Life, Money, War, Way

“For this was the other thing that Elric knew; that to compromise with Tyranny is always to be destroyed by it. The sanest and most logical choice lay always in resistance.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 2, Chapter 5 “Detecting Certain Hints of the Higher Worlds” (p. 259)
The Elric Cycle, The Revenge of the Rose (1991)

“Fate is cruel, Oone. It would be better if it provided us with one unaltering path. Instead it forces us to make choices, never to know if those choices were for the best.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

“We are mortals,” she said with a shrug. “That is our particular doom.”
Book 3, Chapter 3 “Celebrations at the Silver Flower Oasis” (p. 267)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

Fate, Making love

“When I went to America, her message had so sunk into my ears that I became a radical. I went to America to study at the University of California, where a jurist of international law was teaching. I wanted to take my degree in international law. And that was the period of McCarthyism, of the communist witch hunts—my choices were laid out. To get away from Sunset Boulevard, from the girls with red nail polish, I ran off to Maxwell Street and lived among the Negroes. A week, a month. I felt good with them—they were real, they knew how to laugh. And the day in San Diego when I wasn’t able to get a hotel room because I have olive skin and looked like a Mexican … well, that helped.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979) Fourth President and ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Ali Bhutto in Karachi, April 1972

Law, Girl, Study, Universe

“Leadership starts with our choices. That’s why I decided that no one on my staff will make less than $52k/year. It’s likely one of the highest entry-level salaries on the Hill. We pinch pennies elsewhere, but it’s worth every dime to pay a living wage.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/AOC (22 February 2019) Twitter Quotes (2019), February 2019

Making love

“Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility,; especially when the choice comes too late in life for one to be able to start over again.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

"A General View of Mental Illness", p. 213
The Denial of Death (1973)

Life, Freedom

“I hate tyranny, at least I think I do; but I hate it most of all where most are concerned in it. The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny. If, as society is constituted in these large countries of France and England, full of unequal property, I must make my choice (which God avert!) between the despotism of a single person, or of the many, my election is made. As much injustice and tyranny has been practised in a few months by a French democracy, as in all the arbitrary monarchies in Europe in the forty years of my observation.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to Captain Thomas Mercer (26 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 96
1790s

God, Hate, Making love, Democracy

“I have made my choice, Hori. I will share my life with you for good or evil, until death comes…”

Agatha Christie book Death Comes as the End

With his arms round her, with the sudden new sweetness of his face against hers, she was filled with an exultant richness of living.
Death Comes as the End (1945)

Life, Death, Evil

“This argument is not about sexual practices or particular lifestyles. It hinges on whether gay and lesbian Americans are entitled to the same enjoyment as their fellow citizens of the freedom to make choices about how to live their lives without suffering discrimination in consequence.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: Non-fiction, Created equal: Why gay rights matter to America (1994), p.154

Making love, Freedom, Suffering

“Sometimes a woman accepts tho favours of many lovers, but this is generally now-a-days scouted by all respectable people, and the fashion is daily becoming more and more prevalent for the woman to leave her ancestral home for that of the husband of her choice, although, as matter of law, the husband occupies no recognized legal relation involving rights and responsibilities in regard either to his wife or his children.”

William Logan (author) book Malabar Manual

Malabar Manual, Page 136 https://archive.org/details/MalabarLogan/page/n148 Malabar Manual (1887)

Children, People, Law, Home

“Meister Eckhart, the German churchman and mystic of the fourteenth century; Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in the fifteenth; Jacob Boehme, a German, in the sixteenth and seventeenth; Emanuel Swedenborg in the seventeenth and eighteenth. We are spiritually free, they said, the stewards of our own evolution. Humankind has a choice. We can awaken to our true nature. Drawing fully from our inner resources we can achieve a new dimension of mind; we can see more.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Two, Premonitions of Transformation and Conspiracy

Nature, Drawing

“Whatever their station or sophistication, the conspirators are linked, made kindred by their inner discoveries and earthquakes. You can break through old limits, past inertia and fear, to levels of fulfillment that once seemed impossible … to richness of choice, freedom, human closeness. You can be more productive, confident, comfortable with insecurity. Problems can be experienced as challenges, a chance for renewal, rather than stress. Habitual defensiveness and worry can fall away. It can all be otherwise.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter One, The Conspiracy

Fear, Confidence, Problem, Freedom

“Acting on our own, by ourselves, we cannot establish justice throughout the world; we cannot insure its domestic tranquility, or provide for its common defense, or promote its general welfare, or secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. But joined with other free nations, we can do all this and more. We can assist the developing nations to throw off the yoke of poverty. We can balance our worldwide trade and payments at the highest possible level of growth. We can mount a deterrent powerful enough to deter any aggression. And ultimately we can help to achieve a world of law and free choice, banishing the world of war and coercion.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address at Independence Hall

War, World, Justice, Law

“One thing that is important is that, if you have a choice between a lower valuation with someone you really like, or higher valuation with someone you have a question mark about, take the lower valuation.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

During an interview with PandoDaily - Fireside Chat With Elon Musk - Jul, 17th 2012

Question

“Brexit was not our choice, it is the choice of the UK. Our proposal tries to help the UK in managing the negative fallout of Brexit in Northern Ireland in a way that respects the territorial integrity of the UK.”

Michel Barnier (1951) French politician

Brexit negotiators working 'day and night' for agreement https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45816306 BBC News (10 October 2018) 2018

Way, Help

“In a time of crisis, with grave questions demanding urgent answer at every moment, no body of men would dare claim to be judged infallible. There was indeed no clear way, but almost always a hideous choice of evils. I can only know, for myself, that my mind will be at rest for having taken no decision inconsistent with what on all the facts I felt right.”

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1938/oct/03/international-relations#column_1308 in the House of Lords (3 October 1938) on the Munich Agreement Foreign Secretary

Men, Way, Question, Decision

“Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice - stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Tweet by @David_Cameron https://twitter.com/David_Cameron/status/595112367358406656 (3 May 2015) 2010s, 2015

Strong

“When we have negotiated that new settlement, we will give the British people a referendum with a very simple in-or-out choice to stay in the EU on these new terms; or come out altogether. It will be an in/out referendum.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

David Cameron promises in/out referendum on EU https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21148282 BBC News (23 January 2013) 2010s, 2013

People

“Democratic consent for the EU in Britain is now wafer thin… Simply asking the British people to carry on accepting a European settlement over which they have had little choice is a path to ensuring that when the question is finally put - and at some stage it will have to be - it is much more likely that the British people will reject the EU. That is why I am in favour of a referendum. I believe in confronting this issue - shaping it, leading the debate. Not simply hoping a difficult situation will go away.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

David Cameron speech: UK and the EU https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21160684 BBC News (23 January 2013) 2010s, 2013

People, Hope, Question

“The vegan choice is revolutionary, it is an act of daily love for animals and people.”

Loredana Cannata (1975) Italian actress

La scelta vegana è rivoluzionaria, è un atto d’amore quotidiano verso animali e persone. Interview "Loredana Cannata “La Scelta Vegana È Un Atto D’amore Quotidiano”" https://www.vegsicilia.it/blog/personaggi/loredana-cannata-scelta-vegana-atto-damore-quotidiano/, Veg Sicilia (October 8, 2018).

Love, People, Making love, Animals

“Summarizing his deficiencies, Karl Marx was neither progressive nor enlightened; he was a racist, anti-Semite, a German nationalist, a warmonger, autocratic, anti-freedom proponent, Machiavellian, pro-Black slavery, petty, homophobic, megalomaniac, a bully and slanderer, anti-choice, and a reactionary against liberalism and industrial capitalism. In almost every sense, Marx fit the quintessential image of Hitler like a tight glove, both appearing almost indistinguishable. Like father and son, Marx and Hitler were two social justice warriors, determined to weaponize intolerance, racism, and nationalism for what they call the greater good. In so many ways, considering their almost identical political and social makeup, metaphorically speaking, Hitler could easily be regarded as the son of Marx.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 361

Justice, Way, Sense, Freedom

“Frankie Boyle: We had the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow this year. A great choice of venue: a place where people think Hepatitis B is a vitamin.”

Frankie Boyle (1972) Scottish comedian

Live at the Apollo 10/12/2014

People, Game, Thinking

“That which the God devoted man may not do for any consideration, is indeed also outwardly forbidden in the Perfect State; but he has already cast it from him in obedience to the Will of God, without regard to any outward prohibition. That which alone this God-devoted man loves and desires to do, is indeed outwardly commanded in this Perfect State; but he has already done it in obedience to the Will of God. If, then, this religious frame of mind is to exist in the State, and yet never to come into collision with it, it is absolutely necessary that the State should at all times keep pace with the development of the religious sense among its Citizens, so that it shall never command anything which True Religion forbids, or forbid anything which she enjoins. In such a state of things, the well-known principle, that we must obey God rather than man, could never come into application; for in that case man would only command what God also commanded, and there would remain to the willing servant only the choice whether he would pay his obedience to the command of human power, or to the Will of God, which he loves before all things else. From this perfect Freedom and superiority which Religion possesses over the State, arises the duty of both to keep themselves absolutely separate, and to cast off all immediate dependence on each other.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 197

Love, God, Making love, Religion

“It’s funny about career choices. I had to fight to test for the Janet Leigh role in Walking My Baby Back Home. Janet couldn’t dance at the time and I could—but she was a bigger name. I also fought to get the role Piper Laurie had in Son of Ali Baba. Luckily, I lost that one. The one I didn’t want to do was Revenge of the Creature.”

Lori Nelson (1933) Actress, model

Science-Fiction was considered bottom of the barrel in those days. Of course, that’s the picture I am most remembered for. It’s very ironic! Interview with Lori Nelson http://www.westernclippings.com/interview/lorinelson_interview.shtml

Home, Revenge, Time, Dance

“He leaves the reader with a realization. The line between those born with choices and those not so lucky is very thin. The side of the divide you’re born on is purely random.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

Savita Iyer, Ahrestani in: "Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil Dens and iniquity"

“He was strongly opposed to getting loans from international financial institutions but the crisis during his time left the country with no choice but to fully embrace World Bank and IMF and the liberalisation policies.”

Chandra Shekhar (1927–2007) Indian politician

PM Chandrashekhar - A firebrand idealist

World, Time, Country

“I espouse reproductive libertarianism, because when everyone has the broadest choice, love itself expands.”

Andrew Solomon (1963) American journalist

The affection my family have found in one another is not a better love, but it is another love, and just as species diversity is crucial to sustain the planet, this diversity strengthens the ecosphere of kindness. The road less traveled by, as it turns out, leads to pretty much the same place.
Source: Far from the Tree, Ch. 12 Father, p. 700.

Love, Making love

“The first evil choice or act is linked to the second; and each one to the one that follows, both by the tendency of our evil nature and by the power of habit, which holds us as by a destiny.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

As Lessing says, 'Let the devil catch you but by a single hair, and you are his forever.'
Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 152.

Nature, Evil

“Luiza (his oldest daughter) expressed this option in college. At the time, talked with her and school counselors. It was important to let the choice be hers and that any pressure was accompanied by homophobic colleagues. Fortunately, there was no question about their most serious option. That, remember, is personal.”

Marcelo Tas (1959) Brazilian actor

In a news magazine Alfa, talks about his daughter being gay. Vote em mim, Ronaldo Bressane, September 12, 2010, Alfa, Portuguese http://web.archive.org/web/20101006030234/http://revistaalfa.abril.com.br/cultura-e-sociedade/cultura-entretenimento/vote-em-mim/,

School, Question, Time, Personality

“If we could be any mathematician in the history of the world (besides ourselves), who would we rather be? …we narrowed the choice down to Euler and Pólya, and finally settled on George Pólya because of the sheer enjoyment of mathematics that he has conveyed by so many examples.”

George Pólya (1887–1985) Hungarian mathematician

Donald E. Knuth, comments at Pólya's 90th birthday celebration quoted by Gerald L. Alexanderson, The Random Walks of George Polya (2000)

World, History, Mathematics

“Paul Scholes would have been one of my first choices for putting together a great team – that goes to show how highly I have always rated him. An all-round midfielder who possesses quality and character in abundance.”

Paul Scholes (1974) English footballer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/apr/22/paul-scholes-tributes-600-games-manchester-united
Marcello Lippi, Italian manager who won five Serie A championships and the Champions League with Juventus, as well as the 2006 World Cup with Italy

“A gross but deflated old man, of cringing manners, inarticulate in speech and with the hygiene habits of a pig, and could not conceive how a man so utterly devoid of self respect could ever have been selected as a personal physician by anyone who had even a limited possibility of choice.”

Theodor Morell (1886–1948) Personal physician to Adolf Hitler

Hugh Trevor-Roper interviewed Morell in 1945.

Personality, Self-confidence

“Golikov was a perfect choice. While he himself likely saw Stalin as a guardian angel, Stalin surely saw in him an individual on whom he could rely completely.”

Filipp Golikov (1900–1980) Soviet general

David E. Murphy

Angels, Perfection

“Will considered what to do. When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don’t take are snuffed out like candles, as if they’d never existed. At the moment all Will’s choices existed at once. But to keep them all in existence meant doing nothing. He had to choose, after all.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 2 : Balthamos and Baruch

Way

“To will freedom and to will to disclose being are one and the same choice; hence, freedom takes a positive and constructive step which causes being to pass to existence in a movement which is constantly surpassed.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Ethics of Ambiguity

Pt. III : The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity, Ch. 3 : Freedom and Liberation]
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)

Freedom

“My proof that homosexuality is not a choice? A question for my straight male readers: Is there anything I could do or say or write that would convince you to willingly, happily, eagerly, anxiously, deliriously, lustfully put my dick in your mouth and leave it there until I had an orgasm? I rest my case.”

Dan Savage book Skipping Towards Gomorrah

Source: Skipping Towards Gomorrah (2002), p. 79

Question

“Being female in this world is having been robbed of he potential for human choice by men who love to hate s. One does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice Objectification may well be the most singly destructive aspect of gender hierarchy, specially as it exists in relation to intercourse.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7

Love, Men, Hate, World

“Yes, all right, Landsman understands, so go shit in the ocean, that he made not the right but the only choice. He understands that the necessity of covering up for the dark deeds of the boys in the top drawer is one that nozzes have been making into a virtue since the dawn of police work.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), Chapter 45

Making love, Boy, Understanding

“Next to the bestowal of life itself, the right to direct that life is God’s greatest gift to man…. Freedom of choice is more to be treasured than any possession earth can give. It is inherent in the spirit of man. It is a divine gift to every normal being… Everyone has this most precious of all life’s endowments--the gift of free agency--man’s inherited and inalienable right.”

David O. McKay (1873–1970) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Improvement Era (February 1962) p. 86

Life, God, Freedom

“His religious requirements—that the service come from Cranmer’s rites in the old prayer book, that it take 33 minutes or less, that the church be within 10 minutes’ driving distance and that the altar be sufficiently simple so that it wouldn’t remind him of a gift shop—limited his choice of parishes.”

John Cheever (1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer

Susan Cheever, Home before Dark Houghton Mifflin (1984).

Books

“Why does the sexual appetite cause so much unspeakable joy and irrational misery, so much suicidal and homicidal madness, and so much absurd theological ranting? Because every sexual choice is going to play a role in determining the temperament and talents of the next generation, and of all future generations who will inherit the earth from us. To be simple about it for once, a single friendly fuck can fill a continent with morons or geniuses in only a few thousand years.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by Sigismundo Celine

Suicide, Future, Joy, Madness

“We need to start talking about this. Strangely, the rapid growth in the rich-poor educational gap provides a ray of hope: if the relationship between family income and educational success can change this rapidly, then it is not an immutable, inevitable pattern. What changed once can change again. Policy choices matter more than we have recently been taught to think. So how can we move toward a society in which educational success is not so strongly linked to family background? Maybe we should take a lesson from the rich and invest much more heavily as a society in our children’s educational opportunities from the day they are born. Investments in early-childhood education pay very high societal dividends. That means investing in developing high-quality child care and preschool that is available to poor and middle-class children. It also means recruiting and training a cadre of skilled preschool teachers and child care providers. These are not new ideas, but we have to stop talking about how expensive and difficult they are to implement and just get on with it.”

Sean Reardon American sociologist

No Rich Child Left Behind, 2013

Children, Education, Family, Hope

“A referendum is little more than a "rumour of choice."”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

The idea behind the mechanism, ever since its first modern manifestations two centuries ago under Napoleon, has been to replace democracy with the sensation of democracy. That is: to replace the slow, complex, eternally unclear continuity of democracy, and all the awkwardness of citizen participation, with something clear and fast which allows those in power to impose their agenda. Through an apparently simple question with a one-syllable answer, those who ask can get a blank cheque from the citizenry; that is, if they choose their moment well and come up with a winning question.
Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997)

“America must get to work. In the chilled climate in which we live, we must go against the prevailing winds. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred, and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that buried its head in the sand waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young without jobs, education, or hope. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and timeless absence of moral leadership. We must dissent, because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

Speech delivered on September 6, 1990, before the Annual Judicial Conference of the Second Circuit, quoted in Supreme Justice Speeches and Writings Thurgood Marshall. Edited by J. Clay Smith, Jr. (2002).

Education, Fear, Hope, Waiting

“Many medical and legal professionals believe that in many ways marijuana is actually less harmful than my drug of choice, alcohol. So if adults choose to use marijuana instead of alcohol, the governments, as a matter of freedom and liberty, should not be able to prohibit them from doing so.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

“Regulate marijuana like wine,” April 10, 2011, 2012, Gray’s campaign website, http://www.judgejimgray.com/grayarticles2.php

Alcohol, Way, Freedom, Marijuana

“Throughout the social sciences today, the dominant form of modeling is based upon the rational-choice paradigm. Game theory, in particular, is typically based upon the assumption of rational choice. In my view, the reason for the dominance of the rational-choice approach is not that scholars think it is realistic. Nor is game theory used solely because it offers good advice to a decision maker, because its unrealistic assumptions undermine much of its value as a basis for advice.”

Robert Axelrod book The Complexity of Cooperation

Introduction
The Complexity of Cooperation (1997)

Game, Thinking, Decision, Science

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

2000s, Address at Stanford University (2005)

Life, Death, Fear, Making love

“Plastic pollution free world is not a choice but a commitment to life - a commitment to the next generation.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Beautify your Breath - Beautify your Life (2015)

Life, World

“Democracy, according to Ross Feingold, is considered the most legitimate form of government because the power of choice rests with the people. “But when this power dynamic is altered and citizens lose their influence, the legitimacy of the system is threatened.””

Olusegun Adeniyi (1965) Nigerian journalist

That is where we are in Nigeria today because the choices made by citizens with their ballots are being increasingly rendered useless. And this threat to ‘the legitimacy on the system’ is coming from our courts, including the highest court in the country whose decisions are not only final but affect those of lower courts. Politics In Nigeria: When Judges Become Our Electoral College https://www.opinionnigeria.com/politics-in-nigeria-when-judges-become-our-electoral-college-by-olusegun-adeniyi/ (February 28, 2020), Opinion Nigeria.

People, Democracy

“I told myself I had no choice but in a situation like that the choice you have is how you go about not having a choice.”

China Miéville book The Dusty Hat

The Dusty Hat (p. 211)
Short Fiction, Three Moments of an Explosion (2015)

“I'm pro-choice, but I believe that most abortions are immoral. I take the nuanced middle ground.”

Dennis Prager (1948) American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator, theologian

1990s

“To try to distinguish between our objectives in World War II and the war we are fighting today- that one war was justified and the other isn't- is a complete fallacy. All wars are wars of choice. The Revolutionary War was a war of choice- we could have stayed British subjects if we had wanted. Equally so, we could have chosen not to fight World War II if we had wanted. But there were compelling reasons to fight both the Revolutionary War and World War II, as there are compelling reasons to fight the war against terror today.”

Lynn Compton (1921–2012) Easy Company soldier turned noted jurist

Source: Call of Duty: My Life Before, During and After the Band of Brothers (2008), p. 250

War, World, Fight

“We may not stop until we have done our part to fashion a world in which there shall be some share of fellowship; which shall be better than a den of thieves. Let us not disguise the difficulties; and, above all, let us not content ourselves with nobel aspirations, counsels of perfection, and self-righteous advice to others. We shall need the wisdom of the serpent; we shall have to be content with short steps; we shall be obliged to give and take; we shall face the strongest passions of mankind — our own not the least; and in the end we shall have fabricated an imperfect instrument. But we shall not wholly have failed; we shall have gone forward, if we bring to our task a pure and chastened spirit, patience, understanding, sympathy, forbearance, generosity, fortitude, and, above all, an inflexible determination. The history of man has just begun; in the aeons which lie before him lie limitless hope or limitless despair. The choice is his; the present choice is ours. It is worth the trial.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

"A Pledge of Allegiance" - speech for "I Am an American Day" Central Park, New York, New York. (20 May 1945) Hand credited H. G. Wells with inspiring some of the ideas expressed in this speech.
Extra-judicial writings

Wisdom, Lie, World, Hope

“[B]iography is an essential part of human memory. We think about ourselves in terms of what we have done – our identity is constructed around our past. Are history and biography linked or just two parallel strands? Biographers and historians make choices about how to frame their subject, they draw together fragments to present a possible glimpse of the unattainable whole. An historian might have a thesis or method which drives his/her enquiry whereas a biographer has, perhaps, a particular view of an individual they wish to present. Neither presents the truth, only an interpretation.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 2 : The authority of the author : Biography and the reconstruction of the canon

Truth, Making love, History, Thinking

“Wisdom of what herself approves makes choice,
Nor is led captive by the common voice.
Clear-sighted Reason Wisdom's judgment leads,
And Sense, her vassal, in her footsteps treads.
That thou to Truth the perfect way may'st know,
To thee all her specific forms I'll show:
He that the way to honesty will learn,
First what's to be avoided must discern.
Thyself from flatt'ring self-conceit defend,
Nor what thou dost not know to know pretend.
Some secrets deep in abstruse darkness lie:
To search them thou wilt need a piercing eye.
Not rashly therefore to such things assent,
Which, undeceived, thou after may'st repent;
Study and time in these must thee instruct,
And others' old experience may conduct.
Wisdom herself her ear doth often lend
To counsel offer'd by a faithful friend.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

Source: Of Prudence (1668), line 11

Wisdom, Truth, Lie, Secret

“The harder farmers push animals beyond their natural limit, and the more closely animals are confined, often the greater the risk of disease and the heavier the reliance on vets to keep herds alive. Their weapon of choice is antibiotics.”

Philip Lymbery book Farmageddon

Farmageddon (2014)

Disease, Nature, Animals

“Because human choice remains sacrosanct and mysterious, none of us can guarantee a transformation of society. Yet there is reason to trust the process. Transformation is powerful, rewarding, natural. It promises what most people want...The new world is the old—transformed.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Thirteen, The Whole- Earth Conspiracy

People, World, Nature

“Every day, we are learning more about this virus and the disease it causes. One of the things we are learning is that although older people are the hardest hit, younger people are not spared. Data from many countries clearly show that people under 50 make up a significant proportion of patients requiring hospitalization. Today, I have a message for young people: you are not invincible. This virus could put you in hospital for weeks, or even kill you. Even if you don’t get sick, the choices you make about where you go could be the difference between life and death for someone else. I’m grateful that so many young people are spreading the word and not the virus. As I keep saying, solidarity is the key to defeating COVID-19 - solidarity between countries, but also between age groups. Thank you for heeding our call for solidarity, solidarity, solidarity.”

Tedros Adhanom (1965) Director-General of the World Health Organization, former Minister in Ethiopia

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 20 March 2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---20-march-2020, World Health Organization.

Life, Death, People, Age

“I think my Darling you will have to be very patient - Do not burn any boats - The P.M. [ H. H. Asquith ] has not treated you worse than Ll. G has done, in fact not so badly for he is not as much in your debt as the other man, (i.e. Marconi).* On the other hand are the Dardanelles. I feel sure that if the choice were equal you would prefer to work with the P.M. than with LI. G.”

Clementine Churchill (1885–1977) wife of Sir Winston Churchill and a life peeress in her own right

It's true that when association ceases with the P.M. he cools & congeals visibly, but all the time you were at the Admiralty he was loyal & steadfast while the other would barter you away at any time in any place. I assure you he is the direct descendant of Judas Iscariott [sic]. At this moment altho I hate the P.M, if he held out his hand I could take it, (tho' I would give it a nasty twist) but before taking Ll. G's I would have to safeguard myself with charms, touchwoods, exorcisms & by crossing myself - I always can get on with him & yesterday I had a good talk, but you can't hold his eyes, they shift away -You know I'm not good at pretending but I am going to put my pride in my pocket & reconnoitre Downing Street.

Letter: Alderley Park, Chelford, Cheshire, 30th December, 1915

Feeling, Thinking

“We (Government of Macau) appeal to the public not to go out unless it's absolutely necessary. That's the best prevention (against the COVID-19). We had no choice but to cancel the (2020 Lunar) new year celebrations even when everything was ready.”

Ho Iat Seng (1957) Chief Executive of Macau

Ho Iat Seng (2020) cited in " Macau confirms second patient infected with Chinese coronavirus https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3047337/macau-confirms-second-patient-infected-chinese-coronavirus?utm_content=article&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR3J-0hvJBW78tSA93OtCjZ6icG5WEavRE5UoemIkusUOiK3vuJ1DgNRWZc#Echobox=1579765233" on South China Morning Post, 23 January 2020.

“The moral choices that Trump poses to anyone with a conscience or love of country are only made more clear by the ludicrous irony of his own story.”

Richard Wolffe (1968) American journalist

Let's drop the euphemisms: Donald Trump is a racist president (2018)

Love, Making love, Country

“The choice of methods and weapons to be used by the champions of democracy will not depend upon our wishes but will be determined by political and social conditions. and especially by the methods and weapons of the enemy.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. V, The Period of Dictatorship "Hitlerism and Social Democracy" (1934) https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/hitler/index.htm

Democracy, Dependency

“It seems, moreover, that my argument has some relevance to choices we must make even now. There are some species of large predatory animals, such as the Siberian tiger, that are currently on the verge of extinction. If we do nothing to preserve it, the Siberian tiger as a species may soon become extinct. The number of extant Siberian tigers has been low for a considerable period. Any ecological disruption occasioned by their dwindling numbers has largely already occurred or is already occurring. If their number in the wild declines from several hundred to zero, the impact of their disappearance on the ecology of the region will be almost negligible. Suppose, however, that we could repopulate their former wide-ranging habitat with as many Siberian tigers as there were during the period in which they flourished in their greatest numbers, and that that population could be sustained indefinitely. That would mean that herbivorous animals in the extensive repopulated area would again, and for the indefinite future, live in fear and that an incalculable number would die in terror and agony while being devoured by a tiger. In a case such as this, we may actually face the kind of dilemma I called attention to in my article, in which there is a conflict between the value of preserving existing species and the value of preventing suffering and early death for an enormously large number of animals.”

Jeff McMahan (philosopher) (1954) American philosopher

" Predators: A Response https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/predators-a-response/", The New York Times, 28 Sept. 2010

Death, Fear, Making love, Suffering

“We have a lot of employment, but the quality of the jobs has collapsed over the last 10 years. The people who work now used to be people who had a job with good income, good benefits and good security. The jobs, overwhelmingly, created have none of those things: low wages—that’s why our wages have gone nowhere; bad benefits—those are shrinking, pensions and so on; and the security is virtually gone. One of our biggest problems in America is people don’t know one week to the next what hours they’re working, what income they’ll get. You can’t have a life like this. So, what we’ve done is we’ve ratcheted down the quality of jobs. We’ve made people use up their savings since the great crash of 2008, so they’re in a bind. They have really no choice but to offer themselves at lower wages or at less benefit or at less security than before, which is why there’s the anger, which is why there was the vote for Mr. Trump in the first place, because this talk of recovery really is about that stock market with the funny money that the Fed Reserve pumped in, but is not about the real lives of people, which are in serious trouble, hence the numbers, like a average American family can’t get a $400 emergency cost because it doesn’t have that kind of money in the background. So, you’ve undone the underlying economy, you have this frothy stock market for the 1 percent, and this is an impossible tension tearing the country apart.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

We Need a More Humane Economic System—Not One That Only Benefits the Rich (December 26, 2018)

Life, Money, Bad luck, People

“I see not then how the children of Adam, or of any man else, can be free from subjection to their parents. And this subjection of children being the fountain of all regal authority, by the ordination of God himself. From whence it follows, that civil power, not only in general is by Divine institution, but even the assigning of it specifically to the eldest parent. Which quite takes away that new and common distinction which refers only power universal and absolute to God, but power respective in regard of the special form of government to the choice of the people. Nor leaves it any place for such imaginary pactions between Kings and their people as many dream of. This lordship which Adam by creation had over the whole world, and by right descending from him the Patriarchs did enjoy, was as large and ample as the absolutest dominion of any monarch which hath been since the creation.”

Robert Filmer book Patriarcha

Source: Patriarcha, pp. 57–58

God, Children, People, World

“Have you noticed how over recent decades, our expectations of the future have gradually shifted? How maybe we used to quietly assume that life for the next generation would be better than ours, and now quietly assume the opposite? That is not the mark of a civilisation that is making good choices. That is not a show that we need to get back on the road.”

Shaun Chamberlin

"My coronavirus dilemma – weighing crises against each other?", Dark Optimism (2020) http://www.darkoptimism.org/2020/03/12/my-coronavirus-dilemma-weighing-crises-against-each-other/

Life, Making love, Future

“It has long been a fashion amongst you, which you have had the complaisance to adopt at the instigation of a corrupt press, to call every friend of reform, every friend of freedom, a Jacobin, and to accuse him of French principles. ... What are these principles?—That governments were made for the people, and not the people for governments.—That sovereigns reign legally only by virtue of the people's choice.—That birth without merit ought not to command merit without birth.--That all men ought to be equal in the eye of the law.—That no man ought to be taxed or punished by any law to which he has not given his assent by himself or by his representative.—That taxation and representation ought to go hand in hand.—That every man ought to be judged by his peers, or equals.—That the press ought to be free. ... Ten thousand times as much has been written on the subject in England as in all the rest of the world put together. Our books are full of these principles. ... There is not a single political principle which you denominate French, which has not been sanctioned by the struggles of ten generations of Englishmen, the names of many of whom you repeat with veneration, because, apparently, you forget the grounds of their fame. To Tooke, Burdett, Cartwright, and a whole host of patriots of England, Scotland and Ireland, imprisoned or banished, during the administration of Pitt, you can give the name of Jacobins, and accuse them of French principles. Yet, not one principle have they ever attempted to maintain that Hampden and Sydney did not seal with their blood.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘To the Merchants of England’, Political Register (29 April 1815), pp. 518–19
1810s

Men, People, Books, World

“It is my honestly held view that Parliament will not be able to get a deal on Brexit and therefore the only choice, reluctantly, is to ask the people to take another look at it.”

Tom Watson (Labour politician) (1967) British politician

Brexit: 'High price to pay' for Labour stance, says Watson https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48658683 BBC News (17 June 2019) 2019

People

“By this time, the era of cut-and-run economics ought to be finished. Such an economy cannot be rationally defended or even apologized for. The proofs of its immense folly, heartlessness, and destructiveness are everywhere. Its failure as a way of dealing with the natural world and human society can no longer be sanely denied. That this economic system persists and grows larger and stronger in spite of its evident failure has nothing to do with rationality or, for that matter, with evidence. It persists because, embodied now in multinational corporations, it has discovered a terrifying truth: If you can control a people’s economy, you don’t need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant. If you control people’s choices as to whether or not they will work, and where they will work, and what they will do, and how well they will do it, and what they will eat and wear, and the genetic makeup of their crops and animals, and what they will do for amusement, then why should you worry about freedom of speech? In a totalitarian economy, any "political liberties" that the people might retain would simply cease to matter. If, as is often the case already, nobody can be elected who is not wealthy, and if nobody can be wealthy without dependence on the corporate economy, then what is your vote worth? The citizen thus becomes an economic subject.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Conserving Forest Communities"
Another Turn of the Crank (1996)

People, Truth, World, Way

“That was a life lesson to me. Because, yes it's important to take back those choices and be who we are un-apologetically, but we should always think of it in the modern context and what makes sense for our lives today, and to not be fundamentalist about anything.”

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril (1978) director

as an answer to using a modern tattoo technique on herself, as opposed to a more traditional technique Q & A with Alethea Arnaquq-Baril - TUNNIIT: RETRACING THE LINES OF INUIT TATTOOS, Cinema Politica - 12 Jan 2017, at 10 Min 54 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1cXIe4IR7w

Life, Making love, Thinking, Sense

“Great art and domestic bliss are mutually incompatible. Sooner or later, you’ll have to make your choice.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Road to the Sea

The Road to the Sea, p. 298
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Making love, Art

“Farmers have their dignity, just as others do. It is fine to make efforts to make them react to markets, but you cannot then tie their hands and take away their choices. That is putting them in a straitjacket. ... I have always felt that the Community should be able to say 'No' to its big brother”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

America

On GATT, quoted in The Times (16 October 1992), p. 9
President of the European Commission

Making love, Communication, Effort

“I'm God's choice to lead the people of Finland.”

Paavo Väyrynen (1946) Finnish politician

God, People

“Man is endowed with choice, but the world as he has made it is a perfect example of what not to do. Man's basic needs are food, shelter, clothing, and procreation. The stock market, cosmetics, religious games, war games, the myth of teaching, and political games are the lack of these.”

Warren Leopold (1920–1998)

[Westlund, Darren, Cambria Treasures, Warren Leopold, Cambira, CA, Small Town Surrealist Productions, 1990, 39, ASIN: B000E263NM, 2019-03-17, https://www.amazon.com/Cambria-Treasures-Interviews-Noteworthy-Cambrians/dp/B000E263NM]

War, World, Food, Game

“I think that some people are genetically just strong. I really believe that my mom was like that. On the other hand, maybe you're forced to be that way because you realize you're either going to sink or swim, and the choice you make determines the kind of person you become…”

Rita Moreno (1931) Puerto Rican singer, dancer and actress

On strength and perseverance in “Rita Moreno Is Unbreakable” https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a26432578/rita-moreno-one-day-at-a-time-interview/ in Elle Magazine (2019 Feb 22)

People, Making love, Way, Moms

“Being gay isn't a choice, just like being black isn't a choice…I don't stop. I do not give up. I do not take America's 'no' to my identity for an answer.”

Saeed Jones (1985) American poet

On being Black and gay in the United States in “'We're All Struggling': Writer Saeed Jones Reflects On Identity And Acceptance” https://www.npr.org/2019/11/06/776747102/we-re-all-struggling-writer-saeed-jones-reflects-on-identity-and-acceptance in NPR (2019 Nov 6)

“…there are individual ways that we work our way through all of these systems that are corrosive and inescapable. But if there is a solution to the system itself, it’s at a collective level. It’s the level of policy and politics, it’s not at the level of individual choice.”

Jia Tolentino (1988) American writer and editor

On why her book Trick Mirror offers no solutions in “Jia Tolentino: What It’s Like Being the Most Talked About Millennial Writer” https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/11896/jia-tolentino-trick-mirror-book-interview-new-yorker-staff-writer-2019 in AnOther (2019 Sep 15)

Way

Quotes about choice page 21

Quotes about choice
page 21