Quotes about choice
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“Did you hear? You are free."
Yessss. Choice. It is a fine thing. And I choose to take you back, Most High.”

Libba Bray book Rebel Angels

Source: Rebel Angels

“the choices we made today were templates for the future.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Future

“There are some choices you can only make once. You can't go back to where you made a choice and then take the other one.”

Mary Hoffman book City of Flowers

Source: City of Flowers

“Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Religion

“No one can grant you happiness. Happiness is a choice we all have the power to make.”

Dean Koontz book Life Expectancy

Source: Life Expectancy

Happiness

“It's not Cowardly to make a choice about what you want your life to be. Choosing what's right for you, maybe that's the bravest thing you can do.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Angels Twice Descending

Life

“True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.”

Robert McKee (1941) American academic specialised in seminars for screenwriters

Source: Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Nature

“some choices you make with your heart some with your head but when in doubt choose head over heart…. it will keep you alive.
-merry gentry”

Laurell K. Hamilton A Caress of Twilight

Source: A Caress of Twilight

Heart

“As much as we have free choice, absolute destiny is immutable. What is meant to happen does, through one measure or another.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Enshrined

“Choice is the doorway to our creative power. To unleash this power, we must begin from the state of beingness.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

Source: Human Technology: A Toolkit for Authentic Living

“Sometimes you have to accept how things are. You can make it easy on yourself, or you can make it hard. The choice is yours.”

Susan Mallery (1950) American author

Source: Almost Perfect

“Basically, I have two speeds…. Hostile or smart-aleck. Your choice.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Hostility, Speed

“Being oppressed means the absence of choices”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

“So in sum, what are we? We are the creatures that know and know too much. That leaves us with such a burden again we have a choice, to laugh or cry. No other animal does either. We do, depending on the season and the need.”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Animals, Dependency, Cry, Season

“Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Revelations (1993)
Context: The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those people. "Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.

Love, Fear

“Most people have a rope that ties them to someone, and that rope can be short or it can be long. (Be long. Belong. Get it?) You don't know how long, though. It's not your choice.”

Nick Hornby book A Long Way Down

Source: A Long Way Down

People

“I’ll give you a choice. Kill me.”
“By definition ‘choice’ mandates a minimum of two possible avenues of action.”
“I wasn’t done. Or kiss me. But do one or the other. Before I do one or the other to you.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Burned

Kiss

“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Source: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), p. 294.

Wisdom, People, World, Thinking

“A woman who does not know herself has no choice other than to live with other people’s evaluations. But no one can adapt perfectly to public opinion. And herein lies the source of their destruction.”

Natsuo Kirino book Grotesque

Source: Grotesque

People

“What you do in your dreams is never your choice. But it made me happy anyway.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

Happiness, Dreams

“For indeed you have a choice. You can flee and hide, and wait to be found. You can live out your days in terror, without meaning. Or you can take the harder choice, and you can save them.”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

Waiting

“And sometimes drunk women aren't raped; they just make stupid choices--and to say we deserve special treatment when we're drunk because we're women, to say we need to be, I find offensive.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Women, Stupidity

“A dream does not die on its own. A dream is vanquished by the choices ordinary people make about real things in their own lives…”

Jonathan Kozol (1936) American activist and educator

Source: Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation

People, Dreams

“There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: On Love

Loss, Time

“At last, she makes her choice. She turns around, drops her head, and walks toward a horizon she cannot see. After that, she does not look back anymore. She knows that if she does, she will weaken.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“… when people we love make choices, we don't always understand them. But we can go on loving them, just the same. It isn't a matter of comprehension. It's forgiveness.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Love, People, Forgiveness, Understanding

“As Hazel marched down the hill, she cursed in Latin. Percy didn’t understand all of it, but he got,, and a few choice suggestions about where Octavian could stick his knife.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Understanding

“He knew what it was like to love one who did not--or could not--love you back. But he'd had no choice. None of them did.”

Melissa de la Cruz book Revelations

Source: Revelations

Love

“That is what love is I thought. A possibility that becomes a choice. A choice you keep making over and over. Day after day. Year after year. Time after time.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Variant: That is what love is. A possibility that becomes a choice. A choice you keep making, over and over. Day after day. Year after year. Time after time.
Source: Golden: A Retelling of Rapunzel

Love, Time

“I want to say yes, but I don't want to be with a boy whose heart belongs to somebody else. Just once, I want to be somebody else's first choice”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Boy, Heart

“There is no cosmic scale on which you can weigh your actions; you learn too late what choices ruin the fragile balance.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Learning

“Disagreement is part of being a person who has choices. One of those choices is to respect others and engage in intelligent conversation about differences of opinion without becoming enemies, eventually allowing us to move forward to compromise.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America's Future

Intelligence, Parting, Personality

“For each of us destiny is a blend of potential, circumstances, and choices.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: A World Without Heroes

“It wasn’t was easy as picking one over the other. Nothing ever was. It wasn’t as though I’d even had a choice, not really.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

“What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love?”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest (1996)
Context: What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love?

Love

“Where were we? I've forgotten.
He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever.
Right. Yes. The usual choices.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Love

“We forget that the simple gesture of putting a book in someone's hands can change a life. I want to remind you that it can. I want to thank you because it did. - 2010 Indies Choice Award”

Kate DiCamillo (1964) American children's writer

Life, Books, Change, Forgetting

“They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society dying of too much choice.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“Equally disquieting are the times when we do make a choice, only to later feel as though we have murdered some other aspect of our being by settling on one single concrete decision.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Feeling, Decision, Time

“It's better to make a mistake with the full force of your being than to timidly avoid mistakes with a trembling spirit. Responsibility means recognizing both pleasure and price, action and consequence, then making a choice.”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

Pleasure

“Sometimes choice is a luxury that fate does not afford us.”

Jasper Fforde book The Last Dragonslayer

Source: The Last Dragonslayer

Fate

“Their reasons don't mean anything unless I have a choice.”

Scott Westerfeld book Pretties

Source: Pretties

“To forgive or not to forgive… are those my only choices?”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Forgiveness

“But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Cats, Thinking, Bee

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Men, People, Law, Reading

“I don't see that we have much choice," I said, "since we don't have anyone who can grow wings."
"I will push you off this mountain," Sam warned.
"All right," Blitzen decided, "let's try it. I mean the rune, not pushing Magnus off the mountain.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Mountain

“The past does not have to be your prison. You have a voice in your destiny. You have a say in your life. You have a choice in the path you take.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: When God Whispers Your Name

Life, Past

“There's a rule, I think. You get what you want in life, but not your second choice too.”

Alison Lurie (1926) American novelist and academic

Life, Thinking

“If love was a choice, who would ever choose such exquisite pain?”

Margaret Landon (1903–1993) writer, missionary

Love, Pain

“Like it or not,” he said, “you're still his daughter. Run from it, spit on it, that’s your choice. Those of the blood can insult the blood. Nobody else. I won’t allow it.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Daughters

“Where you are is who you are. The further inside you the place moves, the more your identity is intertwined with it. Never casual, the choice of place is the choice of something you crave.”

Frances Mayes book Under the Tuscan Sun

Source: Under the Tuscan Sun

“No-one chooses me. I do not give anyone that right. I am Karsa Orlong of the Teblor. All choices belong to me.”

Steven Erikson book Reaper's Gale

Source: Reaper's Gale

“Baby, we have no choice of what color we're born or who our parents are or whether we're rich or poor. What we do have is some choice over what we make of our lives once we're here.”

Mildred D. Taylor book Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Source: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Color, Parent, Baby

“The choices we make, make us.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“…I finally understood what true love really meant. …that love meant that you care for another person's happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

John Tyree, Epilogue, p. 275
Source: 2000s, Dear John (2006)

Love, Pain, Happiness, Personality

“So I would choose to be with you,
That's if the choice were mine to make,
But you can make decisions too,
And you can have this heart to break”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Decision, Heart

“Life itself is a privilege, but to live life to the fullest- well, that is a choice.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

Source: The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success

Life

“The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Variant: The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
Source: A Clockwork Orange

Life, Evil

“My choices were to either give in and let them kill all of us or fight back with everything I had. I chose the second one, ’cause I’m just funny that way.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Way, Fight

“I'll be damned if I apologize for the choices I've made. They were hard decisions, but I had good reasons for making them.”

Christine Feehan American writer

Source: Oceans of Fire

Decision

“Decapitation is not a healthy lifestyle choice.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“If you have a choice between extra makeup or extra weapons always take the weapons. Just the fact that you're debating between those two choices proves that you're going to need the weapons more.”

Laurell K. Hamilton A Kiss of Shadows

Source: A Kiss of Shadows

“And then a new screen, one I had never seen before, never even heard of popped up. It gave me a choice. I could become the new Lord of Darkness myself, or I could take a gamble and be reincarnated. I chose wisely.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: Twisted

“Psychologically, the choice "to think or not" is the choice "to focus or not." Existentially, the choice "to focus or not" is the choice "to be conscious or not." Metaphysically, the choice "to be conscious or not" is the choice of life or death.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

Life, Death, Thinking

“Attachment to being right creates suffering. When you have a choice to be right, or to be kind, choose kind and watch your suffering disappear.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Suffering

“The day Henry made a choice… that some men are just too interesting to die.”

Seth Grahame-Smith (1976) US fiction author

Source: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Men

“Oliver: You turned me down. So why, I wonder, did you decide Amelie would be a better choice?
Claire: She smells better. And she made me cookies.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Midnight Alley

“Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“They called each other family and that’s what they were—sisters. Many people in the world had family of the heart, kin by choice rather than by blood, and hers had come along in her darkest hour and saved her life.”

Christine Feehan American writer

Source: Spirit Bound

Life, People, World, Family

“Sometimes, everything in the world seems to be lined up against you. All the evidence says you ought to run the other way. Make the bravest choice, not the safest. It's not the best advice, but it's all I have to offer”

Linda Lael Miller (1949) American writer

Source: The Rustler

World, Way

“Awareness precedes choice and choice precedes results.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Greatness Guide: Powerful Secrets for Getting to World Class

“Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.”

Jared Diamond (1937) American scientist and author

Source: Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality

Animals

“Um," Grover said. "Percy?"
"Yeah?"
"I thought you'd want to know."
"Yeah?"
"Cerberus? He's saying we've got ten seconds to pray to the god of our choice. After that… well… he's hungry.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

God

“There is no such thing as no choice. There is always a choice. The only question is whether it's a bearable one.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

Question

“When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Life, People

“I guess it's a choice we make," she said.

"What's a choice?" I asked.

And she said, "How much of the world we let in.”

David Levithan book Love Is the Higher Law

Source: Love Is the Higher Law

World

“What happens if your choice is misguided,
You must try to correct it
But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t?
Then you must find a way to live with it.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Way

“It's choice that makes us human.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

“Upon this crown my pledge I give,
To my last breath, I hold this choice,
I will your unjust deaths avenge,
All here who died without a voice.”

Suzanne Collins Gregor and the Marks of Secret

Source: Gregor and the Marks of Secret

Death

“Man has free choice, or otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would be in vain.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

“But in some ways, the most significant choices one makes in life are done for reasons that are not all that dramatic, not earth-shaking at all; often enough, the choices we make are, for better or for worse, made by default.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Life, Way

“Your destiny grows clearer, Jason Grace. When the choice comes again- storm or fire- remember me. And do not despair.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Despair

“She was incapable of love for any object not of her own choice and she resented anyone's demand for it.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Love

“The history of free men is never really written by chance - but by choice. Their choice.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Address in Pittsburgh http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/education/bsa/citizenship_merit_badge/eisenhower_citizenship_quotations.pdf (9 October 1956) <br class="br">1950s

Men, History, Chance

“To recognize you are the source of your own loneliness is not a cure for it. But it is a step toward seeing that it is not inevitable, and that such a choice is not irrevocable.”

Robin Hobb (1952) American fiction writer (pseudonym)

Source: Golden Fool

Loneliness

“Magic gives you a lot of choices," Grandad says. "Most of them are bad.”

Holly Black book Red Glove

Source: Red Glove

“We do not always like the people we love- we do not always have that choice.”

Anne Enright The Gathering

Source: The Gathering

Love, People

“the identity of an individual is essentially a function of her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

Source: The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity

“If I have to have a past, then I prefer it to be multiple choice.”

Alan Moore book Batman: The Killing Joke

Source: Batman: The Killing Joke

Past

“We make choices everyday, some of them good, some of them bad. And - if we are strong enough - we live with the consequences.”

David Gemmell (1948–2006) British author of heroic fantasy

Strong

“… love is the sum of our choices, the strength of our commitments, the ties that bind us together.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Love the One You're With

Love

“Identity was partly heritage, partly upbringing, but mostly the choices you make in life. ~ Bran”

Patricia Briggs book Cry Wolf

Source: Cry Wolf

Life

“It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Love

“There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These things you find so weak and contemptible in us - these are just the hazards of being free”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest (1996)

Freedom, Personality, Dead

“When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence. When silence is imposed, it is censorship.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Silence

“It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence; it is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Keep Moving From This Mountain (1965)
Context: We’ve got to move on to the point of seeing that on the international scale, war is obsolete -- that it must somehow be cast into unending limbo. But in a day when Sputniks and Explorers are dashing through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence; it is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation. And so we must rise up and beat our swords into plowshares, and our spears into pruning hooks and nations must not rise up against nations, neither must they study war anymore.

“To experience commitment as the loss of options, a type of death, the death of childhood's limitless possibility, of the flattery of choice without duress-this will happen, mark me. Childhood's end.”

David Foster Wallace book The Pale King

Source: The Pale King

Death, Loss, Childhood