Choose To Become Quotes & Sayings

We have consistently supported a legalization program which is both generous to the alien and fair to the countless thousands of people throughout the world who seek legally to come to America. The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans. — Ronald Reagan

The fact that you are possessed by a demon does not mean you must become evil. Being evil is a choice, just as being good is a choice. If you let the demon take over, it's because you choose to. — James Swain

I believe in positive despotism. That means an exchange between people. I'm thinking about the fact that someone serves me breakfast in my bed. I can not see anything wrong in that. Because everything is a question of exchanges between people. Everyone has some specific possibilities and can to a certain extent do whatever they want. If one wants to become rich one can study economy and if one wants to be poor one can choose to become a professor in butterfly wings for example. So we can choose. — Odd Nerdrum

Think of your brain as a radio transmitter. It broadcasts thoughts, directions and vibrations into your life. Every day you get to choose the station it's tuned into to. Learn to tune out negativity to make room for positivity. Walk away from the nonsense around you. Focus on the positives, and soon the negatives will become static. — Anonymous

Have faith that you are a daughter of Heavenly Father who loves you.

Determine which of your divine gifts will allow you to be a champion for Christ.

Realize that you have been sent to Earth with a divine mission that is yours to achieve.

Let your knowledge come from the good parts of life that surround you.

Choose to set high standards and defend them.

Become a great woman by doing good. Always be on the Lord's errand.

Leave your mark. Be true in every situation--even when no one is watching.

Let your strength come from having high moral standards.

Look to Him.
Stand as His witness.
Become a keeper of what matters most. — Emily Belle Freeman

When we become response-able - that is, when we learn to choose our responses freely and consciously - we are free to build a life of continuing growth and increasing happiness. — Sue Patton Thoele

Stop waiting for someone to give you what you want. The universe is too busy to care. It has worlds to create and galaxies to destroy. If you're worried about death and about your own end, don't. It's coming whether you like it or not. You will either arrive at the end of your life in style or you will arrive broken and beaten, but whichever way you choose, have no doubt that you WILL ARRIVE. There is only now. If you have power, it's now. If you can change anything, you have to do it now. If you want to be or to have that next great thing, be it. Have it. Take it. Own it. Do it. Become it. Be awesome. Do epic shit. Do it now. The clock is ticking. — Johnny B. Truant

When you become an adult, you get to choose your path. You take all the things you learned while you were on everyone else's and use it to build your own, but it's about where you heart wants to go. It's all up to you. — Lisa De Jong

If we understand how larger systems are contributing to our shame and we choose only to change ourselves, we become as negligent as the person who says, "I'm not changing myself, because the system is bad." Context is not the enemy of personal responsibility. Individualism is the enemy of personal responsibility. — Brene Brown

There are so many different forms of silence: the silence that tyrannical states force on their citizens, stealing their memories, rewriting their histories, and imposing on them a state-sanctioned identity. Or the silence of witnesses who choose to ignore or not speak the truth, and of victims who at times become complicit in the crimes committed against them. Then there are the silences we indulge in about ourselves, our personal mythologies, the stories we impose upon our real lives. — Azar Nafisi

One who voluntarily deprives oneself of food may live twice as long as one who is forced to be without food. Similarly, you can choose to go without water for several days, but if you are deprived of it, you die more quickly. The older men survived because they had resaons to live - a garden to finish, a wife to see to, and grandchildren to help raise - whereas the younger men had less encouraging them to return (from battle). Strong wills become more crucial than strong bodies. It was this principle that inspired the establishment of Outward Bound. Yet, more than two millennia earlier, Alexander led his troops out of the desert with this same principle. — Lance Kurke

No one is born poor. People choose to become and remain poor. No one became wealthy from begging. Only people who have set limits on themselves do that. No one became wealthy from living off handouts. This is not the will of God for anyone. No one became wealthy from foraging in people's bins. Only rats do that. You can excel and make money where you are without running helter skelter in search of green pastures. — Uyoyou C. Charles-Iyoha

Viciousness is part of the world we live in, some of us choose to ignore it with the rationalisation of wanting only positivity to flow our way. How selfish we have become! That the pain of others has become a hindrance to the fulfilment of our positive selves. — Aysha Taryam

When you finally realize that peace is your natural state of being then you will know that any form of non-peace is a belief in illusion. Illusion that anything should be something other than what it is which can never be so. What if instead of waiting for what isn't to become your version of what is, why don't you be peaceful right now while you alter what isn't for you if you so choose? Is it ever worth it to wear a cloak of non-peacefulness over God Brilliance? — John Phillips

People who choose to earn money first, people who put off their real plans until later, until they are rich, are not necessarily wrong. People who want only to live, and who reckon living is absolute freedom, the exclusive pursuit of happiness, the sole satisfaction of their desires and instincts, the immediate enjoyment of the boundless riches of the world [ ... ] such people will always be unhappy. It is true [ ... ] that there are people for whom this kind of dilemma does not arise, or hardly arises, either because they are too poor and have no requirements beyond a slightly better diet, slightly better housing, slightly less work, or because they are too rich, from the start, to understand the import or even the meaning of such a distinction. But nowadays and in our part of the world, more and more people are neither rich nor poor: they dream of wealth, and could become wealthy; and that is where their misfortunes begin."
-from "Things: A Story of the Sixties — Georges Perec

Shoes, unlike feet, are not something you're born with. So you can choose what you want. At first be guided in your choice by people with experience, later by your own experience. Before long you will become so accustomed to your shoes that every nail will be like a finger to feel out the rock and cling to it. They will become a sensitive and dependable instrument, like a part of yourself. And yet, you're not born with them; when they're worn out, you'll throw them away and still remain what you are. — Rene Daumal

No need to choose; become choiceless. And whatsoever happens happens; whatsoever happens is good. Let things happen rather than trying to do, and you will be surprised that all ambiguity disappears. It is a by-product of the chooser's mind, the choosing mind, that creates ambiguity. Otherwise there is no dilemma. Negative and positive are perfectly balancing in life. — Rajneesh

We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. — David Graeber

An existence devoted to reading would have been his ultimate fulfillment, but it had not been given to him. He would have had to choose that path much earlier, to have known what he wanted to do...To have had a life plan. At first it had been interested to be recognized as a promising young banker, to climb the hierarchy, to have responsibilities and to earn a lot of money. Up until the day he had started to feel, dimly at first, then more and more clearly, that the man he had become was the absolute opposite of what he really was. Although the dichotomy weighed heavily on him, for a while the money he was earning was compensation enough, but then it could no longer make up for it. The gap between his ideal and his reality was too great. The weight turned into an anguish that was succeeded by the intolerable idea that he was wasting his life --or even that he had already wasted it. — Antoine Laurain

What you continually choose to do will eventually become a habit, and when it does, it does not feel like a big effort anymore. — Chrissie Willker

I will seek wisdom. I will be a servant to others. A wise man will cultivate a servant's spirit, for that particular attribute attracts people like no other. As I humbly serve others, their wisdom will be freely shared with me. Often, the person who develops a servant's spirit becomes wealthy beyond measure. Many times, a servant has the ear of the king, and a humble servant often becomes a king, for he is the popular choice of the people. He who serves the most grows the fastest. I will become a humble servant. I will not look for someone to open my door - I will look to open the door for someone. I will not be distressed when no one is available to help me - I will be excited when I am available to help. I will be a servant to others. I will listen to the counsel of wise men. I will choose my friends with care. I will seek wisdom. — Andy Andrews

You will become the person you choose to be. — Joyce Swann

Every food I choose to eat helps me become more conscious of how it either moves me forward to my fab weight or backward to my flab weight. — Karen Salmansohn

There is a multitude of forms of this appearing of un-freedom in the guise of its opposite: in being deprived of universal healthcare, we are told that we are being given a new freedom of choice (to choose our healthcare provider); when we can no longer rely on long-term employment and are compelled to search for a new precarious job every couple of years, we are told that we are being given the opportunity to reinvent ourselves and discover our creative potential; when we have to pay for the education of our children, we are told that we are now able to become "entrepreneurs of the self," acting like a capitalist freely choosing how to invest the resources he possesses (or has borrowed). In education, health, travel we are constantly bombarded by imposed "free choices"; forced to make decisions for which we are mostly not qualified (or do not possess enough information), we increasingly experience our freedom as a burden that causes unbearable anxiety. — Slavoj Zizek

Selflessness involves giving up your self. You become a martyr. Like the Hindu kamikaze warriors. These Japanese Hindus chose to give up their lives, and they were killed if they didn't. Imagine what their families felt. One day you have a father, and next, you're watching him fly a plane into a ship on Pearl Harbor on television. Those kids didn't do anything wrong. They just lived in an evil country. The axis of evil. That sort of evil is beyond anything you or I will experience in our lifetimes. So be glad. Be glad we live in the US of A. Be glad we get to choose, with our freedoms. Now get out there and fight! — Bill Konigsberg

You don't have to either choose to save the world or become a sellout. I say to people, "Listen dude, how can you save the world if you can't even save yourself? Why don't you try to affect one person's life who's in your life, and that would be historic." — Immortal Technique

Every breath I take becomes deeper, and I become more confident of myself without my crutches. The lies I've filled my body and soul with aren't needed anymore. They're not welcome. I choose to live, not just exist. — James Hetfield

We can be unhappy about many things, but jy can still be there ... It is important to become aware that at every moment of our life we have an opportunity to choose joy ... It is in the choice that our true freedom lies, and that freedom is, in the final analysis, the freedom to love. — Henri Nouwen

Many of us choose relationships of affection and care that will never become loving because they feel safer. The demands are not as intense as loving requires. The risk is not as great.
So many of us long for love but lack the courage to take risks. Even tough we are obsessed with the idea of love the truth is that most of us live relatively decent, somewhat satisfying lives even if we often feel that love is lacking. — Bell Hooks

The prime rule of reality is that we must become in our lives what we choose to experience in the world. — Gregg Braden

You know, like, none of us would choose - no matter where we are in the world - would choose to you know become a member of Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" world, but how much choice is really the question. — Sheena Iyengar

It doesn't matter how we were raised. We become the person we choose to be. — Laura Schlessinger

Choose one thing and become a master of it. Choose a second thing and become a master of that. When you become a master of two worlds (say, engineering and business), you can bring them together in a way that will a) introduce hot ideas to each other, so they can have idea sex and make idea babies that no one has seen before and b) create a competitive advantage because you can move between worlds, speak both languages, connect the tribes, mash the elements to spark fresh creative insight until you wake up with the epiphany that changes your life. — Justine Musk

When you choose to act on your problems, you cease to be a victim of circumstance and become a force of change; that's when you transition to not only being a survivor, but to being a leader or hero too, and an inspiration to those still in the victim's mindset. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Both Fen & Helen needed me to choose, to be their one & only when I didn't want a one & only. I loved that Amy Lowell poem when I first read it, how her lover was like red wine at the beginning and then became bread. But that has not happened to me. My loves remain wine to me, yet I become too quickly bread to them. — Lily King

From the backstabbing co-worker to the meddling sister-in-law, you are in charge of how you react to the people and events in your life. You can either give negativity power over your life or you can choose happiness instead. Take control and choose to focus on what is important in your life. Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life. — Anais Nin

He had to choose between something he had become accustomed to and something he wanted to have. — Paulo Coelho

The ones we choose to love become our anchorwhen the hawser of the blood-tie's hacked, or frays. — Tony Harrison

Those of us raised in the Christian tradition need to choose to either see God in Jesus or to continue to let the Bible define God. Our tradition says that Jesus is God. Maybe we should act as if we think he is instead of worshipping a book. Maybe we should be brave enough to admit that we are compelled to either become blinded ideologues or we need to forthrightly pick and choose what we follow in the Bible. Most Christians do that anyway, many just don't admit it. — Frank Schaeffer

If God were to remove all evil from our world (but somehow leave human beings on the planet), it would mean that the essence of 'humanness' would be destroyed. We would become robots.
Let me explain what I mean by this. If God eliminated evil by programming us to perform only good acts, we would lose this distinguishing mark - the ability to make choices. We would no longer be free moral agents. We would be reduced to the status of robots.
Let's take this a step further. Robots do not love. God created us with the capacity to love. Love is based upon one's right to choose to love. We cannot force others to love us. We can make them serve us or obey us. But true love is founded upon one's freedom to choose to respond. — Billy Graham

It is interesting to note that although our limbic system functions throughout our lifetime, it does not mature. As a result, when our emotional "buttons" are pushed, we retain the ability to react as though we were a two year old, even when we are adults. As our higher cortical cells mature and become integrated in complex networks with other neurons, we gain the ability to take "new pictures" of the present moment. When we compare the new information of our thinking mind with the automatic reactivity of our limbic mind, we can reevaluate the current situation and purposely choose a more mature response. — Jill Bolte Taylor

We want our children to become who they are- and a developed person is, above all, free. But freedom as we define it doesn't mean doing what you want. Freedom means the ability to make choices that are good for you. It is the power to choose to become what you are capable of becoming, to develop your unique potential by making choices that turn possibility into reality. It is the ability to make choices that actualize you. As often as not, maybe more often than not, this kind of freedom means doing what you do not want, doing what is uncomfortable or tiring or boring or annoying — Gregory Millman

It's not that we had no heart or eyes for pain. We were all afraid. We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable ... What was worse, to sit and wait for our own deaths with proper somber faces? Or to choose our own happiness?
So we decided to hold parties and pretend each week had become the new year. Each week we could forget past wrongs done to us. We weren't allowed to think a bad thought. We feasted, we laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories. And each week we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our only joy. And that's how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck. — Amy Tan

Asking men to cut away their "feminine" traits asks them to cut away half their humanity, just as asking women to suppress their "masculine" traits asks them to deny their full autonomy.
What makes us human is not one or the other - the fist or the open palm - it's our ability to embrace both, and choose the appropriate action for the situation we're in. Because to deny one half - to burn down the world or refuse to defend the world from those who would burn it - is to deny our humanity and become something less than human. — Kameron Hurley

When Christian absolutes were the basis of society, immoral activities such as homosexual or lesbian lifestyles and abortion were outlawed. There has been a fundamental shift. Our society is now based on a relative morality: that is, a person can do what he likes and is answerable to no one but himself as long as the majority of people can be persuaded that their interests are not being threatened. This relative morality results in society being told that no one can say anything against those who choose to be sexual deviants, to be public nudists, or to do whatever they want (largely within the confines of the law, which is also changing to become more tolerant of people's actions). — Ken Ham

One doesn't choose to become a writer. One is just born that way. — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

In this atmosphere
Where you have to go
perennially crazy
only to survive,
Which auspicious moment
should I choose to become mad? — Suman Pokhrel

You lost your ability to choose the moment you started to use your eyes to see, and your heart to feel. Choice has become nothing but an illusion for you. — Lionel Suggs

What to keep of all these reels of film, what to throw away? If we could only take 1 memory on our journey, what would we choose? At the expense of what or whom? And most importantly, how to choose among all these shadows, all these spectres, all these titans? Who are we, when all is said and done? Are we the people we once were or the people we wish we had been? Are we the pain we caused others or the pain we suffered at the hands of others? The encounters we missed or those fortuitous meetings that changed the course of our destiny? Our time behind the scenes that saved us form our vanity or the moment in the limelight that warmed us? We are all of these things, we are the whole life that we have lived, its highs and lows, its fortunes and its hardships, we are the sum of the ghosts that haunt us ... we are a host of characters in one, so convincing in every role we played that it is impossible for us to tell who we really were, who we have become, who we will be. — Yasmina Khadra

We are product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger. — Stephen Covey

As I see it, a person's culture represents his appraisal of the things that make up his life. And a fellow becomes cultured, I believe, by selecting that which is fine and beautiful in life and throwing aside that which is mediocre or phony. Sort of a series of free, very personal choices, you might say. If this is true, then I think it follows that 'freedom' is the most precious word to culture. Freedom to believe what you choose and read, think and say and be with what you choose. In America, we are guaranteed these freedoms. It is the constitutional privilege of every American to become cultured or to grow up like Donald Duck. I believe that this spiritual and intellectual freedom, which we Americans enjoy, is our greatest cultural blessing. Therefore, it seems to me, that the first duty of culture is to defend freedom and resist all tyranny. — Walt Disney Company

Firestar, what's wrong?" Firestar shook his head to clear it of apprehension. It was a relief to go right back to the beginning, and tell Cinderpelt about the dream that had come to him as he lay beside the Moonstone. Cinderpelt sat beside him and listened in silence, her steady gaze never leaving his face. "Bluestar told me, 'Four will become two. Lion and tiger will meet in battle, and blood will rule the forest,'" Firestar finished. "And then blood oozed out of the hill of bones and started to fill the hollow. Blood everywhere . . . Cinderpelt, what does it all mean?" "I don't know," Cinderpelt confessed. "StarClan has not shown me any of this. Just as they have the power to show me what will happen, so they can choose not to share with me. I'm sorry, Firestar - but I'll keep thinking about it, and maybe something will happen to make it clearer soon." She pushed her nose against Firestar's fur to comfort him, but though Firestar was grateful for her — Erin Hunter

It is up to man to be an angel or a devil! You become whatever you choose to be! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Our cultures used to be almost hereditary, but now we choose them from a menu as various as the food court of a suburban shopping mall. Ambition, curiosity, talent, sexuality or religion can draw us to new cities and cultures, where we become foreigners to our parents. Synthetic cultures are nimbler than old ones, often imprudently so. They have scattered so widely that they can no longer hear each other and now some have gone so far afield that they have passed through the apocalypse while the rest of us are watching it on TV. — Neal Stephenson

If you're a young person who wants to become an actor, it's really important to walk into a casting room with a sense of yourself and some life experience. You can really delight a room and have them already choose you before you've even said a word! — Kenny Ortega

The more conscious we become the more consciously we choose that which we set in motion to create. — Caroline Myss

Nietzsche clamored for a
Roman Caesar with the soul of Christ. To his mind, this was to say yes to both slave and master. But, in
the last analysis, to say yes to both was to give one's blessing to the stronger of the two - namely, the
master. Caesar must inevitably renounce the domination of the mind and choose to rule in the realm of
fact. "How can one make the best of crime?" asks Nietzsche, as a good professor faithful to his system.
Caesar must answer: by multiplying it. "When the ends are great," Nietzsche wrote to his own detriment,
"humanity employs other standards and no longer judges crime as such even if it resorts to the most
frightful means." He died in 1900, at the beginning of the century in which that pretension was to become
fatal. — Albert Camus

When you have kids, you can choose to make them like you, or become like them, and if you've got something that's going to change every six days or six minutes, you can decide to be as awake and alive and learning as they are. — Jez Butterworth

Every teenager is both a hero and a failure. When we become adults we have to choose where in the middle we'll be. — Miguel Syjuco

I don't want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day.I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grad onto and extend to one another. That's the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don't see it, because I'm too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I'm about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting. — Shauna Niequist

Everyone has the ability to accomplish unique feats, everyone. You choose this. Become someone great in one other life. Forget about failing to many. Who cares? Doesn't matter when you start or finish, just start, no deviations, no excuses. — Tom Platz

It's the choices you make that construct your future. You can choose to become a victim or you can choose to make decisions that empower you. Surround yourself with people who support your vision so you can keep your focus, and your energy! — Rashmi Bansal

I think that, generally, people of the world typify a "free and wild" person as someone who's uprooted, detached and uninhibited. But I don't believe in that kind of freedom. I think that's an infantile concept. Freedom means something when it has escaped something! Those people who escaped things - their inner cages, cages set by others around them - when those people are able to roam free and say, "This is who I am because this is who I choose to be", THAT is freedom. Freedom isn't being stupid; freedom is being so smart that you develop a strength strong enough to break free and become your own person. A better person than what your circumstances would like to define you as. — C. JoyBell C.

Over time, a commitment to challenging, focused work and leisure produces not only better daily experience, but also a more complex, interesting person: the long-range benefit of the focused life. As Hobbs put it, the secret of fulfillment is to choose trouble for oneself in the direction of what one would like to become. — Winifred Gallagher

If I had to choose between putting a saloon or a liberal church on a corner, I'd choose the saloon every time. People who drink up the pay check in the saloon are less likely to become Pharisees, thinking that they don't need the Great Physician, than those who weekly swill the soporific doctrine of man's goodness. — Jay Adams

Before you ever get the person you really want in your life, you will be tested with every person that was wrong for you. You will be tempted with what was easy, what was familiar, what was only physical, what was safe and what was simply a friend to pull you out of a difficult situation because you didn't want to be alone. When you finally meet the person you were meant to be with you won't have to guess, decide or choose. You will be drawn to them. They will seem to fit who you are, but at the same time have the missing pieces that makes you want to become a better person. There is no need to be guarded because this soul is like your own and talking to them about the deepest things in life are effortless. They won't be like any other you have met and you will find yourself looking for parts of them in everyone you meet. — Shannon L. Alder

Unlike a typical professional, I can't quit my job to become a full-time author; I don't have that luxury. For me, writing is therapy; if I choose to write full-time, it might start feeling like work. — Ashwin Sanghi

My hope is that we can navigate through this world and our lives with the grace and integrity of those who need our protection. May we have the sense of humor and liveliness of the goats; may we have the maternal instincts and protective nature of the hens and the sassiness of the roosters. May we have the gentleness and strength of the cattle, and the wisdom, humility, and serenity of the donkeys. May we appreciate the need for community as do the sheep and choose our companion as carefully as do the rabbits. May we have the faithfulness and commitment to family as the geese, and adaptability and affability of the ducks. May we have the intelligence, loyalty, and affection of the pigs and the inquisitiveness, sensitivity, and playfulness of the turkeys.
My hope is that we learn from the animals what it is we need to become better people. — Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

Today, as never before - the information media having become to enlightenment as the cereal aisle is to the supermarket - if you choose not to access the past, you are de facto free to rule it out of existence, at least so far as you might be concerned. — Jack Womack

Awareness by itself is not enough: it must be joined by mastery. We need gradually to develop a steering ability to keep ourselves from slipping mechanically into this or that sub-personality. Thus we become able to identify with each part of our being as we wish. We can have more choice. It is the difference between being impotently transported by a roller coaster and, instead, driving a car and being able to choose which way to go and for what purpose to make the journey. — Piero Ferrucci

Through the fall our nature was stripped of divine illumination and resplendence. But the Logos of God had pity upon our disfigurement, and in His compassion He took our nature upon Himself. On Tabor He manifested it to His elect disciples clothed once again most brilliantly. He showed what we once were and what we shall become through Him in the age to come if we choose to live our present life, as far as possible, in accordance with His ways. — Gregory Palamas

Whether or not any of us become racists is a choice we make. And we are called to choose again and again where we stand on the issue of racism at different moments in our life. — Bell Hooks

I asked her why my father resisted the guards when they always won in the end. Why didn't he just save himself the pain and pay them what they wanted? She told me that sometimes, you can't choose what happens to you, but you can choose who you become because of it. That's why my father fought back. — Jessica Khoury

Invitations not obligations: Our expectations of other people can be a big drain on our emotions. When we ask someone to do something, or, worse, have a belief that someone should do something and insist that he or she comply, it places a great stress on us. And the other person, noting our anxiety and insistence that they conform to our expectations, may actually become less inclined to respond as we like.
Instead, consider everything you want someone else to do to be an invitation that the other person may or may not choose to accept. Of course, if you are an employer or a parent who is trying to ensure a child's safety, you must have parameters and ground rules. Everyone else, however, should be released from the obligation of doing, being, living, and acting as you feel they should. — Will Bowen

Realistically, it's a risk, I suppose, but in this day and age, you almost have to choose between freedom, which can devolve into chaos, and security, which can become a pair of shackles. — Ann Aguirre

I thought about what a priest of Elua had told me about love many years ago, the first time I kept his vigil on the Longest Night. You will find it and lose it, again and again. And with each finding and each loss, you will become more than before. What you make of it is yours to choose. It was true. — Jacqueline Carey

When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything. — G.K. Chesterton

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.
But you have to choose: live or tell. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Words are words. People add meaning to words.
Information is information. With words people add value to information.
Words breathe life into information. Words move mountains of information.
Words are action. Momentum for living evolves from pursuit of deeper, wider and higher significance, utility and value of words.
Words we sow, nourish and harvest feed hungry minds and hearts. Gathered words strengthen, ignite and release us.
Words identify, signify and proclaim our individuality. Words pronounce a purposeful life's choices.
With wisdom, courage and patience we must choose high-performing words for long-term relationships. Chosen words become soul mates. — John R. Dallas Jr.

As we learn in [the] scriptures, the fundamental purposes for the gift of agency were to love one another and to choose God. Thus we become God's chosen and invite His tender mercies as we use our agency to choose God. — David A. Bednar

I believe that you become yourself every single day of your life through your choices and how you think. And that's constantly changing every day ... You are constantly changing, evolving through your experiences, how you interpret your experiences, and how you choose to do things in the future based on those experiences ... Being yourself means you think with your own mind, and you make your own choices and that makes you you. — Jenna Marbles

Selfishness is like a disease that suffocates our capacity to love. While love asks us to deny ourselves for the sake of another, selfishness demands we put ourselves first at their expense. When we choose to be self-centered, we become less kind and content - more needy, sensitive, and demanding. More unsatisfiable. Moodiness and impatience, laziness and irresponsibility, are only selfishness in disguise. — Stephen Kendrick

Have you not seen it? Whenever you choose happiness, you become the victim of unhappiness; whenever you want success, failure comes in; whenever you hope, frustration is waiting for you; whenever you cling to life, death comes and destroys. Have you not seen it happen every day, every moment? These are not opposites, they are together. When one sees them together, then what is there to choose? There is nothing to choose, one becomes choiceless. — Osho

The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses, the ability to harmonize conflicting impulses in our own life and in society, and the capacity to choose adequate means for approved ends. — Reinhold Niebuhr

When I see someone not performing, I am frank enough to tell the person that it's not working out. I request him or her to leave or change jobs within the group. But I see many of our senior colleagues, including my brothers, sons and nephews, empathetic towards non-performers. They don't want to face the issue. They tend to become comfortable with such people and they get protection. They tend to choose people who become personally loyal to them rather than to the company. I think it's important to be professional about such matters. Protecting a non-performer is not good for the business and also the person being protected. This is unprofessional too. The non-performer may be in the wrong job and thus not doing what he or she is best at doing. Empathy that results in protection would lead to a negative result for the employee as well. He or she might be better off in another job within the group or elsewhere. — Subhash Chandra

I'm not saying you have to keep up. But at the moment you choose to stop growing, your world will begin to shrink. You'll be able to communicate with fewer people, especially the young. You will only see reruns. You will not understand how to pay for things. The outside world will become a frightening and unpredictable place. — Daniel H. Wilson

While I bathed, while I tried but failed to sleep, I considered how I might become more like the women I respected and admired. Surrounded as I was by ambitious, accomplished women, I couldn't ignore the little voice in my head that said maybe I was supposed to shed halfway, and do something significant. Contribute something. Accomplish something. Choose. Be. — Therese Anne Fowler

And I still don't know what I would do next. I still don't know how to become an adult. But I know for sure that my parents would be proud of me, proud of their three daughters, no matter what path we choose. And it doesn't matter if we get lost or choose the wrong path, because what matters is choosing to get back up once again. — Marcella Purnama

Remember from this very moment: always choose that which is good for you and good for others. Choose creativity. Become a blessing to existence, because that is the only way that we can persuade God to become a blessing to us. That's the only true prayer: becoming a blessing to everyone - to people, to animals, to trees, to life in all its forms. If one remains consciously alert, slowly slowly the art is learned; slowly slowly it becomes just natural. — Rajneesh

My people have a country of their own to go to if they choose ... Africa ... but, this America belongs to them just as much as it does to any of the white race ... in some ways even more so, because they gave the sweat of their brow and their blood in slavery so that many parts of America could become prosperous and recognized in the world. — Josephine Baker

You get to choose what you want to be. You don't need skills you were born with or permission. If you want to be an artist or whatever, just work harder than everyone else and become an artist! — Dana Schwartz

Freedom may come not from being in control of life but rather from a willingness to move with the events of life, to hold on to our memories but let go of the past, to choose, when necessary, the inevitable. We can become free at any time. — Rachel Naomi Remen

When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty. — Noah Webster

I'll become exactly the tool you want me to be, said Ender silently, but at least I wont be fooled into it. I'll do it because I choose to, not because you tricked me, you sly bastard. — Orson Scott Card

In order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom. If we choose instead to content ourselves with intellectual "wisdom," we will remain in the sphere of illusion and self-deception. — Alice Miller

When you choose your profession, you also choose your own downfall or success. If one chooses to become an artist it is 99% certain that it will go to hell. So you should not become that. If you study economics on Oslo, 99% of all students will do very well and 1% will reach the top. — Odd Nerdrum

It's a myth that people change. They spend tens of thousands of dollars on therapy trying to address their issues, but I know very few people who have ever made any significant changes. You are who you are. You can bemoan it, you can try to become a different person, or you can celebrate yourself. I choose to do the latter — Dennis Hof

Others don't make us angry. There is no force involved. Becoming angry is a conscious choice, a decision, therefore, we can make the choice not to become angry. We choose! — Lynn G. Robbins

But let me offer a word of caution. If you choose to give from your heart, be careful. The most incredible feeling might just overwhelm you. And if you continue in this behavior, that feeling may become permanent. — Steve Goodier

When I was small your grandmother used to say that if you become a police officer, you can't choose who to protect. You have to try to protect everyone. — Fredrik Backman