Quotes about choosing
A collection of quotes on the topic of choosing, doing, use, people.
Quotes about choosing
Speaking at his concert the day after the Manchester Arena bombing (23 May 2017) https://www.businessinsider.com/harry-styles-stops-concert-speech-on-manchester-attack-2017-5?IR=T
“I will choose the bad guy in every story, I am attracted to villians”
Source: https://www.scribd.com/document/531451370/Quotes-of-Famous-People Scibd documents, Cornelius Keagon quotes
“Choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
Sometimes quoted with "difficult" instead of "hard".
A similar thought was expressed by automobile executive Clarence Bleicher in 1947 (before Bill Gates was born): "if you get a tough job, one that is hard, and you haven’t got a way to make it easy, put a lazy man on it, and after 10 days he will have an easy way to do it".
Misattributed
Source: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/26/lazy-job/
The Satanic Bible (1969)
Source: The Last Wish
Source: A Tale of Love and Darkness
1984
Context: On albums and commercialism: "For every album I’ve ever made, I’ve written many times more music than has actually been released, and the way I choose which music appears is almost totally random, but one thing I have never done is to make music for the sake of commercialism... I don’t think it’s possible to guarantee commercial success for an album anyway, because nobody really knows what is commercial and what isn’t. Even if I went out of my way to make an album that was more accessible to the public, that would not guarantee its commercial success".
Letter as published in The Letters of Mozart & His Family (1938) translated and edited by Emily Anderson, p. 1114.
“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”
Variant: No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
“Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.”
Source: The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt
Close of a speech in House of Commons (1791), as quoted in Once Blind : The Life of John Newton (2008) by Kay Marshall Strom, p. 225.
I Am A Dancer (1952)
Source: Blood Memory
Daybreak http://books.google.com/books?id=Imte1JcsQ64C&q=%22You+don't+get+to+choose+how+you're+going+to+die+Or+when+You+can+only+decide+how+you're+going+to+live+Now%22&pg=PA135#v=onepage (1968)
Variant or paraphrase: You can't decide how you're going to die. Or when. What you can decide is how you're going to live now.
Habermas (1979) cited in: Werner Ulrich (1983) Critical heuristics of social planning. p. 123
Dita Amory, in Pierre Bonnard: The Late Still Lifes and Interiors; Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009 - ISBN 978-0-300-14889-3, p. 4
Bonnard started to paint usually on an unstretched canvas
“Drugs? Every one has a choice and I choose not to do drugs.”
http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm
Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14108295.alexis_karpouzos?page=2
“freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices.”
Source: The Phantom of the Opera
“In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.”
Source: The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx
“All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hate…I choose love.”
“If they let me choose between you and the dog, I'll choose the dog.”
As quoted in Freedom: A New Analysis (1954) by Maurice William Cranston, p. 112
Quoted by Doug Rule in RuPaul: Ultimate Queen http://www.metroweekly.com/2016/04/ultimate-queen-rupaul/ (2016)
2010s, 2016, July, 2016 Republican National Convention (21 July 2016)
Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 2, p. 20
Wenn Du durchaus nur die Wahl hast, zwischen einer Unwahrheit und einer Grobheit, dann wähle die Grobheit. Wenn jedoch die Wahl getroffen werden muß zwischen einer Unwahrheit und einer Grausamkeit, dann wähle die Unwahrheit.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 39.
As quoted in O<sub>2</sub> : Breathing New Life Into Faith (2008) by Richard Dahlstrom, Ch. 4 : Artisans of Hope: Stepping into God's Kingdom Story, p. 63; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote. It is also used in <i> The White Rose </i> (1991) by Lillian Garrett-Groag, a monologue during Sophie's interrogation.
Disputed
Context: The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.
Source https://gazeta.ua/articles/opinions-journal/_koli-pomizh-hlibom-i-svobodoyu-narod-obiraye-hlib-vin-zreshtoyu-vtrachaye-vse-akscho-obiraye-svobodu-matime-viroschenij-nim-i-nikim-ne-vidibranij-hlib/876589
Bk. 1, ch. 1
Source: The End of the Affair (1951)
Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
Source: What is strategy?, 1996, p. 70
“You are free to choose, but you are not free to alter the consequences of your decisions.”
Source: Crocodile on the Sandbank
Source: The Theater and Its Double
Variant translation: Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
As quoted in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1974) edited by Leopold Labedz
Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood.
1960s, The American Promise (1965)
Context: This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: "All men are created equal" — "government by consent of the governed" — "give me liberty or give me death." Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries, and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty, risking their lives. Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man's possessions; it cannot be found in his power, or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, and provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.
On moving to the Unitied States, as quoted in "Seal: Still Crazy After All These Years" by Fiona Sturges in The Independent (11 October 2003)
Source: [Jarvey, Natalie, December 4, 2017, Morgan Freeman, Kerry Washington Celebrate "Oscars of Science'" at Breakthrough Prize Ceremony, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/morgan-freeman-kerry-washington-celebrate-oscars-science-at-breakthrough-prize-ceremony-1064160, The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles, December 4, 2017]
Source http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20037961,00.html?cid=recirc-peopleRecirc
recalled by Carver Mead in Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of Electromagnetism (2002), p. xix
Source: Art As a Social System (2000), p. 102.
The Bonehunters (2006)
Speech (1972), as quoted by Ioan Myrddin (1980), A Modern History of Somalia, Wilture Enterprises (International) Ltd.
"Before Ethics and Morality" (1972)
July 1, 1960. From the Canadian Bill of Rights.
Source: Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century. 1998, p. 90: Also cited in: AA Files: Annals of the Architectural Association School of Architecture, Nr. 31-32 (1996). p. 111
As quoted in Soviet Strategy and the New Military Thinking (1992) by Derek Leebaert and Timothy Dickinson, p. 68
The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me Is You
Song lyrics, 18 til I Die (1996)
1. America's Search for a Public Philosophy
Public Philosophy (2005)
1860s, On a Piece of Chalk (1868)
Politics and the English Language (1946)
Will Grayson, p. 260
Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010)
God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)
Context: Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.
Original preface to Animal Farm; as published in George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison
“Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt: all else will follow.”
p 438
On the Mystical Body of Christ
Context: Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt: all else will follow. Thou mayest say, "I love only God, God the Father." Wrong! If Thou lovest Him, thou dost not love Him alone; but if thou lovest the Father, thou lovest also the Son. Or thou mayest say, "I love the Father and I love the Son, but these alone; God the Father and God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ who ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of the Father, the Word by whom all things were made, the Word who was made flesh and dwelt amongst us; only these do I love." Wrong again! If thou lovest the Head, thou lovest also the members; if thou lovest not the members, neither dost thou love the Head.
Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), The Rape Debate, Continued, p. 59
Context: I am being vilified by feminists for merely having a common-sense attitude about rape. I loathe this thing about date rape. Have twelve tequilas at a fraternity party and a guy asks you to go up to his room, and then you're surprised when he assaults you? Most women want to be seduced or lured. The more you study literature and art, the more you see it. Listen to Don Giovanni. Read The Faerie Queene. Pursuit and seduction are the essence of sexuality. It’s part of the sizzle. Girls hurl themselves at guitarists, right down to the lowest bar band here. The guys are strutting. If you live in rock and roll, as I do, you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn't repel them. Women have the right to freely choose and to say yes or no. Everyone should be personally responsible for what happens in life. I see the sexual impulse as egotistical and dominating, and therefore I have no problem understanding rape. Women have to understand this correctly and they'll protect themselves better. If a real rape occurs, it's got to go to the police. The business of having a campus grievance committee decide whether or not a rape is committed is an outrageous infringement of civil liberties. Today, on an Ivy League campus, if a guy tells a girl she's got great tits, she can charge him with sexual harassment. Chickenshit stuff. Is this what strong women do?
Conversation at Turin, as quoted in Memoirs of Count Miot de Melito (1788 - 1815) as translated by Frances Cashel Hoey and John Lillie (1881), Vol. II, p. 113
'Monk' refers to George Monck, military ruler of Puritan England after Cromwell, who ultimately gave up power when he invited Charles II in and enabled the English Restoration
Context: I do not care to play the part of Monk; I will not play it myself, and I do not choose that others shall do so. But those Paris lawyers who have got into the Directory understand nothing of government. They are poor creatures. I am going to see what they want to do at Rastadt; but I doubt much that we shall understand each other, or long agree together. They are jealous of me, I know, and notwithstanding all their flattery, I am not their dupe; they fear more than they love me. They were in a great hurry to make me General of the army of England, so that they might get me out of Italy, where I am the master, and am more of a sovereign than commander of an army. They will see how things go on when I am not there. I am leaving Berthier, but he is not fit for the chief command, and, I predict, will only make blunders. As for myself, my dear Miot, I may inform you, I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up. I have made up my mind, if I cannot be master I shall leave France; I do not choose to have done so much for her and then hand her over to lawyers.
My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence