Sunday, February 26, 2012 – Making Choices
A peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one. ~ Rita Mae Brown
Consider what you think justice requires, and decide accordingly. But never give your reasons; for your judgment will probably be right, but your reasons will certainly be wrong. ~ Lord Mansfield
The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn. ~ David Russell
Although every man believes that his decisions and resolutions involve the most multifarious factors, in reality they are mere oscillation between flight and longing. ~ Herman Broch
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything is something you decide to do, and there is nothing you have to do. ~ Denis Waitley
A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens. ~ John Updike
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it. ~ Herman Melville
Activities that seem to represent choices are often inert reproductions of accepted practice. ~ Shoshana Zuboff
As a child my family’s menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it. ~ Buddy Hackett
Capitalism is not about free competitive choices among people who are reasonably equal in their buying and selling of economic power, it is about concentrating capital, concentrating economic power in very few hands using that power to trash everyone who gets in their way. ~ David Korten
Really, what are the options? Levi’s or Wranglers. And you just pick one. It’s one of those life choices. ~ Harrison Ford
Far too often the choices reality proposes are such as to take away one’s taste for choosing. ~ Jean Rostand
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from. ~ Peter Ustinov
I also believe that government has no business telling us how we should live our lives. I think our lifestyle choices should be left up to us. What we do in our private lives is none of the government’s business. That position rules out the Republican Party for me. ~ Jesse Ventura
I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we’re lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it’s worse than fear – it’s active disengagement. ~ Ken Burns
In prehistoric times, mankind often had only two choices in crisis situations: fight or flee. In modern times, humor offers us a third alternative; fight, flee – or laugh.~ Robert Orben
It’s all about being flexible, and avoiding choices whenever possible. Choices suck, they are inherently limiting. ~ Craig Armstrong
Most consequential choices involve shades of gray, and some fog is often useful in getting things done. ~ Timothy Geithner
No self-respecting gay guy would have ever made some of the hair and clothing choices I am still trying to live down. ~ David Copperfield
The talent is in the choices. ~ Robert De Niro
People genuinely happy in their choices seem less often tempted to force them on other people than those who feel martyred and broken by their lives.~ Jane Rule
Was there ever in anyone’s life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before? ~ Joan Didion
You can’t make your kids do anything. All you can do is make them wish they had. And then, they will make you wish you hadn’t made them wish they had.~ Marshall Rosenberg
There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat. ~ Anna Quindlen
Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts. ~ Madame de Stael
Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith
Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit. ~ William James
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before. ~ Mae West
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. ~ Oscar Wilde
When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people. ~ Edmund Burke
If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you. ~ William Tecumseh Sherman
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame. ~ Bertrand Russell
Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright
I have a great love and respect for religion, great love and respect for atheism. What I hate is agnosticism, people who do not choose. ~ Orson Welles
Between truth and the search for it, I choose the second. ~ Bernard Berenson
If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes. ~ Charles Lindbergh
Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Just Above Sunset 