Quotes about choosing
A collection of quotes on the topic of choosing, doing, use, people.
Quotes about choosing
Harry Styles (1994) English singer, songwriter, and actor
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”
Cornelius Keagon (1996) Liberian humanitarian aid worker
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.”
Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist
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/
Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible
The Satanic Bible (1969)
Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music
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".
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer
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.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer
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.”
Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
Source: The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt
William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician
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.
Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer
I Am A Dancer (1952)
Source: Blood Memory
Rich Piana (1970–2017) American bodybuilder and internet personality
Joan Baez (1941) American singer
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) <br class="br">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.
Jürgen Habermas (1929) German sociologist and philosopher
Habermas (1979) cited in: Werner Ulrich (1983) Critical heuristics of social planning. p. 123
Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker
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.”
Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer
http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm
Alexis Karpouzos (1967)
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.”
Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society
“In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian
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.”
Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter
“If they let me choose between you and the dog, I'll choose the dog.”
Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician
Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science
As quoted in Freedom: A New Analysis (1954) by Maurice William Cranston, p. 112
RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros
Quoted by Doug Rule in RuPaul: Ultimate Queen http://www.metroweekly.com/2016/04/ultimate-queen-rupaul/ (2016)
Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America
2010s, 2016, July, 2016 Republican National Convention (21 July 2016)
Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter
Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 2, p. 20
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer
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.
Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member
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.
Stepan Bandera (1909–1959) Ukrainian anti-communist
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
Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer
Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
Michael E. Porter (1947) American engineer and economist
Source: What is strategy?, 1996, p. 70
“A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book Cancer Ward
Source: Cancer Ward
“You are free to choose, but you are not free to alter the consequences of your decisions.”
Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Elizabeth Peters Crocodile on the Sandbank
Source: Crocodile on the Sandbank
Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director
Source: The Theater and Its Double
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer
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.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)
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.
Seal (musician) (1963) British singer-songwriter
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)
Morgan Freeman (1937) American actor, film director, and narrator
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]
Shigeru Miyamoto (1952) Japanese video game designer and producer
Source http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20037961,00.html?cid=recirc-peopleRecirc
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist
recalled by Carver Mead in Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of Electromagnetism (2002), p. xix
Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist
Source: Art As a Social System (2000), p. 102.
Siad Barre (1919–1995) Head of State of Somalia
Speech (1972), as quoted by Ioan Myrddin (1980), A Modern History of Somalia, Wilture Enterprises (International) Ltd.
James W. Prescott (1930) American psychologist
"Before Ethics and Morality" (1972)
John Diefenbaker (1895–1979) 13th Prime Minister of Canada
July 1, 1960. From the Canadian Bill of Rights.
Charles Eames (1907–1978) American designer, half of duo the Eames
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
Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
As quoted in Soviet Strategy and the New Military Thinking (1992) by Derek Leebaert and Timothy Dickinson, p. 68
Bryan Adams (1959) Canadian singer-songwriter
The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me Is You
Song lyrics, 18 til I Die (1996)
Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher
1. America's Search for a Public Philosophy
Public Philosophy (2005)
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist
1860s, On a Piece of Chalk (1868)
Mikhail Bakunin book God and the State
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.
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
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.”
Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher
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.
Camille Paglia (1947) American writer
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?
Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French
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.
Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer
My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence