Choice

I choose to live in a city where riding my bike is a possibility -- where seeing and listening and touching helps build a sense of community -- and so I do it. I don't want to rely on more distant images to tell me about a place minutes from my home.
~ William Ayers, A Kind and Just Parent

I am not over-fond of resisting temptation.
~ William Beckford, Vathek

Between two moments bliss is ripe.
~ William Blake, Europe, A Prophecy (1794). A Prophecy

Follow thou thy choice.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1832). The Alcayde of Molina (From the Spanish)

When a man is drowning, it may be better for him to try to swim than to thrash around waiting for divine intervention.
~ Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

Well, 'tis a lamentable thing, I swear, that one has not the liberty of choosing one's acquaintance as one does one's clothes.
~ William Congreve, The Way of the World (1700). Act III, scene x

Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.
~ Bill Cosby

Audiences cry in the theater when people make a hard choice -- for life.
~ Bill C. Davis

Choice of aim is clearly a matter of clarification of values, especially on the choice between possible options.
~ W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics For Industry, Government & Education, 2nd ed. (1993).

Decision by majorities is as much an expendient as lighting by gas.
~ William Ewart Gladstone, Speech, House of Commons (1858).

He is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is wiser still who, from among the things he can do well, chooses and resolutely follows the best.
~ William Ewart Gladstone, Quoted in Developing The Leader Within You (1993).

Good or bad, everything we do is our best choice at that moment.
~ William Glasser, M.D.

We almost always have choices, and the better the choice, the more we will be in control of our lives.
~ William Glasser, M.D.

A man must take his choice not only between virtue and vice, but between different virtues. . . . The graces and accomplishments of private life mar the man of business and the statesman.
~ William Hazlitt, from The Spirit of the Age (1825). Lord Eldon and Mr. Wilberforce

[R]ights are seconded by force, duties are things of choice.
~ William Hazlitt, in Winterslow, Essays and Characters Written There (1850). Project for a New Theory of Civil and Criminal Legislation (written in 1828)

There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.
~ William Hazlitt, from The Round Table (1817). On the Tendency of Sects

Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.
~ William Hazlitt, from Sketches and Essays (1839).

The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off; the eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one.
~ Bill Hicks, Comedy Performance, London Dominion Theatre (September 1993). Revelations

I'd rather be a lamppost in Chicago than a millionaire in any other city.
~ William A. Hulbert

It's better to tell the truth and run, than to lie and get caught in the act.
~ (Col.) William C. Hunter, Brass Tacks (1910).

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
~ William James, A Text-Book of Psychology (1892).

When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.
~ William James

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
~ William James

We are all, right now, living the life we choose.
~ Peter McWilliams, The Life We Choose

We can consciously end our life almost anytime we choose. This ability is an endowment -- like laughing and blushing -- given to no other animal. . . . In any given moment, by not exercising the option of suicide, we are choosing to live.
~ Peter McWilliams

All I do is play music and golf -- which one do you want me to give up?
~ Willie Nelson

Death of one's own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Expeditions of an Untimely Man

What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneness, and say, "This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned -- and you with it, dust of the dust!" Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, "Never have I heard anything more divine?"
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I would rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it.
~ Will Rogers

If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to the vote?
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, (1950).

Every day the choice between good and evil is presented to us in simple ways.
~ William Edwyn Robert Sangster

I had rather a fool make me merry, than experience make me sad.
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

O, hell! to choose love by another's eyes.
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act I, scene i

O! that way madness lies; let me shun that.
~ William Shakespeare, King Lear

There is little choice in a barrel of rotten apples.
~ William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

To be, or not to be: that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act III, scene i

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act II, scene ii

Would you have me
False to my nature? Rather say I play
The man I am.
~ William Shakespeare, Coriolanus

If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.
~ William Tecumseh Sherman

When you cannot make up your mind between two evenly balanced courses of action, choose the bolder.
~ William Joseph Slim

Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.
~ William (W.) Clement Stone

You always do what you want to do. This is true with every act. You may say that you had to do something, or that you were forced to, but actually, whatever you do, you do by choice. Only you have the power to choose for yourself.
~ William (W.) Clement Stone

Settle the question very early that your life shall be directed by principles and not by impulse.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday, Show Thyself a Man (Sermon)

Everyone who walks an independent path pays a price -- it's just human nature.
~ William Tiller, in The Spirit of Ma'at Magazine (2002). How the Power of Intention Alters Matter

We can choose to throw stones,
to stumble on them,
to climb over them,
or to build with them.
~ William Arthur Ward

A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible "lifestyles" turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.
~ George F. Will

You can give in to the failure messages and be a bitter deadbeat full of excuses. Or you can choose to be happy and positive and excited about life.
~ A.L. Williams, All You Can Do Is All You Can Do, but All You Can Do Is Enough! (1988). Chapter 2. Warning: Failure Messages Ahead

If I choose to bless another person, I will always end up feeling blessed.
~ Marianne Williamson