ChoiceBooks about Choice Click this icon to engrave the quote on mugs, bookmarks, t-shirts and much more
More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
I speak, by the way, not with any sense of futility, but with a panicky conviction of the absolute meaninglessness of existence which could easily be misinterpreted as pessimism. It is not. It is merely a healthy concern for the predicament of modern man.
-Woody Allen, "My Speech to the Graduates" [First published in the New York Times in 1979]
"He tells himself over and over again in any choice presented to him, 'Prefer the hard.' This holds good not only in great matters, but also in very small, in fighting by the frozen Danube and in starting the day early."
"We cut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high road of respectability and duty, and then complain of those ways being so intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us."
Remember that you are an actor in a drama of such sort as the Author chooses: if short, then in a short one; if long, then in a long one. If it be His pleasure that you should enact a poor man, or a cripple, or a ruler, or a private citizen, see that you act it well. For this is your business, to act well the given part. But to choose it belongs to Another.
All men and women are born, live suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.
We try to make choices and do things with our career that make a positive impact. We want to have long-lasting careers, but we don't want to have to give in to the industry. We want to stand for what's right, and you can do that and still be relevant and still matter.
Do you not see, first, that – as a mental abstract – physical force is directly opposed to morality; and secondly, that it practically drives out of existence the moral forces? How can an act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free act of an intelligent being? If you tie a man's hands there is nothing moral about his not committing murder. Such an abstaining from murder is a mechanical act; and just the same in kind, though less in degree, are all the acts which men are compelled to do under penalties imposed upon them by their fellow men. Those who would drive their fellow men into the performance of any good actions do not see that the very elements of morality – the free act following on the free choice – are as much absent in those upon whom they practice their legislation as a flock of sheep penned in by hurdles.
There is no mystery attached to the fact that, in this new era in human history, when for the first time large numbers of people can live unconstrained lives involving high levels of choice, there is a concurrent explosion in depression rates. The burden of responsibility for making innumerable choices can result in a person's becoming psychologically tyrannized by them.
"Suppose some one asserts of his lustful appetite that, when the desired object and the opportunity are present, it is quite irresistible. [Ask him] if a gallows were erected before the house where he finds this opportunity, in order that he should be hanged thereon immediately after the gratification of his lust, whether he could not then control his passion; we need not be long in doubt what he would reply. Ask him, however, if his sovereign ordered him, on the pain of the same immediate execution, to bear false witness against an honourable man, whom the prince might wish to destroy under a plausible pretext, would he consider it possible in that case to overcome his love of life, however great it may be. He would perhaps not venture to affirm whether he would do so or not, but he would unhesitatingly admit that it is possible to do so. He judges, therefore, that he can do a certain thing because he is conscious that he ought, and he recognizes that he is free--a fact which but for the moral law he would never have known."
-Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (p. 118-19), 1963
We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.
"You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at least he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do."
When we begin to realize that we are the co-creators of our lives, we begin to understand the incorporation of Spirit. It is here that we understand the meaning of choice. Through choice we have the opportunity to be responsible for how we act, re-act, think, feel and Be. It is within this responsibility that we can release the ego’s need to find self-power through vengefulness, greed, blame and deception. It is here, that we develop spiritual integrity and the knowingness that we are not alone in our endeavor to find harmony within Mind, Body, and Spirit.
-Linda McCord, "The Relationship of Self", February 26, 2005
He'd have given me rolling lands,
Houses of marble, and billowing farms,
Pearls, to trickle between my hands,
Smoldering rubies, to circle my arms.
You- you'd only a lilting song,
Only a melody, happy and high,
You were sudden and swift and strong-
Never a thought for another had I.
He'd have given me laces rare,
Dresses that glimmered with frosty sheen,
Shining ribbons to wrap my hair,
Horses to draw me, as fine as a queen.
You- you'd only to whistle low,
Gayly I followed wherever you led.
I took you, and I let him go-
Somebody ought to examine my head!
That which you call your soul or spirit is your conciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.
"I think there is choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice."
I was in the drug store the other day trying to get a cold medication...
Not easy. There's an entire wall of products you need. You stand there going,
Well, this one is quick acting but this is long lasting...
Which is more important, the present or the future?
Books about Choice
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