The more alternatives, the more difficult the choice.
Abbe' D'Allanival
The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.
Ben Stein
Our choices add up; each one influences others, and cumulatively1 a series of delightful2 short-term choices can leave us much worse off in the long run.
Daniel Akst, We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess, 2011
A person has three choices in life. You can swim against the tide and get exhausted3, or you can tread water and let the tide sweep you away, or you can swim with the tide, and let it take you where it wants you to go.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Northern Lights, 1993
I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962)
The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
George Eliot (1819 - 1880)
Destiny is a name often given in retrospect4 to choices that had dramatic consequences.
J. K. Rowling, J. K. Rowling Official Website
It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
J. K. Rowling, Harry5 Potter and The Chamber6 of Secrets, 1999
A pessimist7, confronted with two bad choices, chooses both.
Jewish Proverb
The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.
John Dewey (1859 - 1952)
An executive is a person who always decides; sometimes he decides correctly, but he always decides.
John H. Patterson
A weak man has doubts before a decision, a strong man has them afterwards.
Karl Kraus (1874 - 1936)
When I make up my mind to do a thing it stays made up.
L. M. Montgomery (1874 - 1942), Anne of Green Gables, 1908
When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision.
Lord Falkland (1610 - 1643)
Check your ego8 at the door and check your gut9 instead. Every right decision I have ever made has come from my gut. Every wrong decision I've made was the result of me not listening to the greater voice of myself
Oprah Winfrey (1954 - ), Stanford Commencement Adress, 2008
If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. That's the lesson. That lesson alone, will save you a lot of grief. Even doubt means don't.
Oprah Winfrey (1954 - ), Stanford Commencement Adress, 2008
When you don't know what to do, get still. Get very still until you do know what to do.
Oprah Winfrey (1954 - ), Stanford Commencement Adress, 2008
When yu' can't have why you choose, yu' just choose what you have.
Owen Wister, The Virginian, Chapter 13, 1929
Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains10.
Paolo Giordano, The Solitude11 of Prime Numbers: A Novel
Give no decision till both sides thou'st heard.
Phocylides
We must give lengthy12 deliberation to what has to be decided13 once and for all.
Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)
If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.
Robert Fritz
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011), Stanford Commencement Adress, 2005
