Decisions And Choices In Life Quotes & Sayings

Every decision is easy once you make it. The important thing is to think carefully, make your decision, and then work to make your choice the right one. That is the secret to a happy life. There are very few wrong decisions in life, but very few people who are willing to make the effort it takes to make their decisions the right ones. — John Kramer

Many of our efforts to intentionally craft and subsequently force our limited vision on life has more often than not resulted in some degree of cataclysm or schism or division or any number of other things that aren't all that savory. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Life turns on small choices.
A last-minute decision to take a shortcut over a snowy pass.
A shrugging dismissal of the odd-looking man in the long coat standing off to one side.
A decision to postpone a physical exam till a less busy time.
A word spoken with the best intentions.
Looking back, after the lives are destroyed, the blood spilt, the families shattered, and even the courses of nations changed forever, the mistakes that started the doomsday clock ticking down often seem minor, even innocent-even virtuous. So easy to make.
David Eller would give anything-no, everything-to go back and undo those mistakes. But life does not give us that chance. Like everyone else, he has no choice but to dangle from the hand of that clock, trying in vain to pull them backward as they tick inexorably toward zero. — William Carmichael

Mom always liked to say that we hardly ever know the decisions we make that change our lives, mostly because they are little ones. You took this bus instead of that one and ended up meeting your soul mate, that kind of thing. But there was no doubt in my mind that this was one of those life-changing moments. — Rachel Hawkins

You never want one thing at any given moment of life. Your mind always comes up with at least two choices. If your limbic system wins, the choice you make seems to be pleasurable at first but in the long run ends up being the wrong one. And if your prefrontal cortex wins the choice you make may appear rough at first, but in the long run it turns out to be the right one. — Abhijit Naskar

Misperceiving that there is one correct choice is a common mistake. Coming to understand that there are usually a few good choices
and then there's the one you pick, commit to, and make great
is the best way to make flexible, optimal, good decisions in life. — Katie Couric

The choices Israelis face and the decisions they make, day in and day out, are literally the difference between life and death. In many ways, I liken their reactions to the way I felt while serving in Iraq. — Pete Hegseth

Love allows freedom for the beloved, even the freedom to leave. It surely grants the freedom to make mistakes, or to make decisions that bring out challenging situations. Challenges are part of this life simulation game after all. Love doesn't judge the person by their choices and deeds. Love says: "I trust and respect that you will eventually find your path on your own, whatever it may be. You don't need to agree with me - I love your 'yes' and I love your 'no.' I may get upset at you, but I still love you. You use your free will to do what you believe to be right. You live your life, with your choices and their results. It's just an additional honor and fun to have you in my life while we both enjoy it. — Akemi G

In order to align your life choices with your values, you will need to inquire about the effects of your actions (and inactions) on yourself and others. Although we are always stumbling upon new knowledge that shifts our choices and life direction, bringing conscious inquiry to life means that we continually ask questions that lead us to the information we need to make thoughtful decisions. Asking questions is liberating because we develop great understanding and discover more choices with our new knowledge. — Zoe Weil

The decisions you make about your work life are especially important, since most people spend more of their waking lives working than doing anything else. Your choices will affect, not only yourself and those closest to you, but in some way the whole world. — Laurence Boldt

Life is as simple as these three questions: What do I want? Why do I want it? And, how will I achieve it? — Shannon L. Alder

Mr. Albert Einstein was right: If you feel you need to go one way, even when everyone else is going the other way, do so, do so to make positive changes in your life and for this world. I guarantee you, that you will never regret that decision. Believe in yourself, other people will also believe you in time. I believe in you. Yes, I believe in you. — Martin R. Lemieux

I'm not forcing you to do anything. You need to make your own damn decisions . And I'm not playing this game where we ignore reality and pretend to have a normal conversation for a few hours. You need to face reality and stop turning life into a movie. I'm not a puppet in your show. This is real life and you're always trying to ignore it for some cheap fantasy version where no problems exist. That's not noble of you, okay? You're not strong. You're a weak person like the rest of us. You've just learned to excel at avoiding issues. But there are issues . Life has so many freaking issues and if you can't force your own self to face life and make decisions without someone telling you what the hell to do, you're just going to end up another chess piece moved around by others. — Marilyn Grey

to be right in the wrong direction may be wrong; what then is the wrong direction? — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

When you're in love with two people, always choose the second. The fact that you are constantly thinking of the second person makes it obvious that the first will never fulfill you, unless the second person did not fulfill you either. At this point, you have to choose the third person because God is getting a little tired of your inattention and indecisiveness, and is planning on sending a fourth person into your life just to slap you around with the bible for not entering the promised land. — Shannon L. Alder

when true purpose calls, double mindedness, confusion and frustration come along. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

One of the most important things that I have learned in my 57 years is that life is all about choices. On every journey you take, you face choices. At every fork in the road, you make a choice. And it is those decisions that shape our lives. — Mike DeWine

If you believe that hard work pays off, then you work hard; if you think it's hard to get ahead even when you try, then why try at all? Similarly, when people do fail, this mind-set allows them to look outward. I once ran into an old acquaintance at a Middletown bar who told me that he had recently quit his job because he was sick of waking up early. I later saw him complaining on Facebook about the "Obama economy" and how it had affected his life. I don't doubt that the Obama economy has affected many, but this man is assuredly not among them. His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he's made, and his life will improve only through better decisions. But for him to make better choices, he needs to live in an environment that forces him to ask tough questions about himself. There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day. — J.D. Vance

Until YOU get enough of what you're going through, no matter what advice a person gives you, you'll continue to go through the same thing. When you get the courage to stop making excuses for them, and stop excusing their behavior, then you'll be able to break free from that unhealthy situation. You've got to be willing to face YOUR truth in order to move on and be at peace. You matter! — Stephanie Lahart

But nirvana is a radical transformation of how it feels to be alive: it feels as if everything were myself, or as if everything
including "my" thoughts and actions
were happening of itself. There are still efforts, choices, and decisions, but not the sense that "I make them"; they arise of themselves in relation to circumstances. This is therefore to feel life, not as an encounter between subject and object, but as a polarized field where the contest of opposites has become the play of opposites. — Alan W. Watts

With the need for the self in the time of another / I left my seaport grim and dear / knowing good work could be made / in the state governed by both Hope and Despair. — Roman Payne

Many twentysomethings assume life will come together quickly after thirty, and maybe it will. But it is still going to be a different life. We imagine that if nothing happens in our twenties then everything is still possible in our thirties. We think that by avoiding decisions now, we keep all of our options open for later - but not making choices is a choice all the same. — Meg Jay

Regardless of your age, you can make better choices in the moment. Small decisions - about how you eat, move, and sleep each day - count more than you think. As I have learned from personal experience, these choices shape your life. — Tom Rath

Life hands us a lot of hard choices, and other people can help us more than we might realize. We often think we should make important decisions using just our own internal resources. What are the pros and cons? What does my gut tell me? But often we have friends and family who know us in ways we don't know ourselves. — Sheena Iyengar

I believe in the ability to choose. I believe this life is made up of our choices and their consequences - the good and the bad. I do not believe in letting anything up to fate. We are the makers of our own destinies, our own futures, our own paths. To blindly follow is an insult to the miracle of being human. To be human is to make choices; the moment you allow others to make decisions for you is the moment you do an injustice to not only mankind but to yourself. — Kelseyleigh Reber

Some people live their lives as if each day will be their last. Some approach love the same way, in a desperate attempt to outrun the tiny changes
or huge ones that are always looming on each of our horizons. But the sense of urgency that comes from wanting to experience life and love to the
fullest can force decisions that are not always in your best interests or anyone else's, for that matter. In fact, sometimes facing the consequences of
your choices can be even worse than death. You may live only once, but you don't necessarily want it to feel like forever. — Tonya Hurley

To me, beauty is confidence. I think I'm pretty confident in the decisions and the choices I make in my personal life and career, but the same time I also let my fans know that, just like them, I have insecurities. I have moments when I don't feel good about myself. I think people can forget that, at the end of the day, I'm just a normal girl dealing with lots of the same issues as them. — Selena

Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don't be afraid to stand firm on the decisions that you make. Trust yourself. Believe in your instincts. Do what works best for YOU. Stay true to yourself and be good to yourself. Allow every decision that you make to empower, enrich, and add value to your life! — Stephanie Lahart

Before you make a decision, ask yourself this question: will you regret the results or rejoice in them? — Rob Liano

Get rid of all that is unnecessary. Wabi-sabi means treading lightly on the planet and knowing how to appreciate whatever is encountered, no matter how trifling, whenever it is encountered. [ ... ] In other words, wabi-sabi tells us to stop our preoccupation with success
wealth, status, power, and luxury
and enjoy the unencumbered life. Obviously, leading the simple wabi-sabi life requires some effort and will and also some tough decisions. Wabi-sabi acknowledges that just as it is important to know when to make choices, it is also important to know when not to make choices: to let things be. Even at the most austere level of material existence, we still live in a world of things. Wabi-sabi is exactly about the delicate balance between the pleasure we get from things and the pleasure we get from freedom of things. — Leonard Koren

Continually one faces the horrible matter of making decisions. The solution is, as far as possible, to avoid conscious rational decisions and choices; simply to do what you find yourself doing; to float in the great current of life with as little friction as possible; to allow things to settle themselves, as indeed they do with the most infallible certainty. — Christopher Morley

Ultimately, our lives hinge on the ability to make right choices and decisions. By God's grace, I made the most important decision a person can ever make. I invited Jesus Christ to be Lord of my life and made a commitment to follow Him. God offers each of us the free gift of eternal life through faith in Jesus by "confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead" (Romans 10:9). It is a wonderful and peaceful feeling to serve a God who loves me and cares about every detail of my life. — R.A. Dickey

When a dancer comes onstage, he is not just a blank slate that the choreographer has written on. Behind him he has all the decisions he has made in life Each time, he has chosen, and in what he is onstage, you see the result of those choices. You are looking at the person he is, and the person who, at this point, he cannot help but be Exceptional dancers, in my experience, are also exceptional people, people with an attitude toward life, a kind of quest, and an internal quality. They know who they are, and they show this to you, willingly. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

Although I love elegant parties, dancing and dining and spending the night with a sweet woman in my arms, my life belongs to literature. — Roman Payne

The choices and decisions we make in terms of how we use the land ultimately affect our very DNA. Environmental issues are life issues. — Terry Tempest Williams

For decades we have been living lives of abundance, with little regard for our natural resources or global health. But we are now facing hard choices in our energy policy. Future generations - my children and grandchildren, along with yours - will have to live with the decisions we make today. And so it is time for us to make some tough and - hopefully - smart choices regarding our energy use and production before it is too late. — John McCain

Although it pains me to admit it, I am quite familiar with the holes in life. And this familiarity is due to the fact that I spend far more time in these holes than I spend on the paths that brought me to them. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Sometimes we need to do things we'd rather not do, in order to get the peace that we need; to look after our own well-being and to return to a healthy state. Decisions we may make may hurt others at times. Sometimes it hurts us too. I have found myself in situations like this recently. It a hard choice. But truly, there are times that we have to take care of ourselves. Sometimes there are no good choices, just painful ones ... Sometimes that's just how real life is. — Jose N. Harris

For a witch stands on the very edge of everything, between the light and the dark, between life and death, making choices, making decisions so that others may pretend no decisions have even been needed. Sometimes they need to help some poor soul through the final hours, help them to find the door, not to get lost in the dark. — Terry Pratchett

Your choices are made in a moment, and yet their consequences transcend a lifetime. — MJ DeMarco

Some decisions in life naturally lead to an unhappy ending, leaving you sinking by degrees in a lake of quicksand. And, unless someone reaches to pull you out, chances are you will drown in the consequences. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I realized much later in life that the reason this decision between MIT and IBM was so agonizing was because it wasn't really about choosing a career; it was about deciding who I was, which part of myself I wanted to be, and that's the hardest decision any of us has to make. — Mike Massimino

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Perhaps it's time to inventory the imprints and anchors in our own life. Even if they once were completely reasonable, are they still reasonable? Once the old choices are reconsidered, we can open ourselves to new decisions-and the new opportunities of a new day. — Dan Ariely

The real dividing line between things we call work and the things we call leisure is that in leisure, however active we may be, we make our own choices and our own decisions. We feel for the time being that our life is our own. — Raymond Williams

If I have refused to risk, I have in the self-same decision refused to love. And if indeed I have refused to love, tragically I have refused to live. And when will I realize that that in and of itself is an unacceptable risk. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The choices we make in life are equally important to us, as those of others are to them. It is an arrogant attitude in the mind of those who feel superior to believe their choices are better than others. Having respect for others regardless of who they are is the greatest choice anyone can make. — Ellen J. Barrier

We all make a lot of choices in life. Most of the time we can't see with perfect clarity where those choices will lead. It's only with hindsight that we can look back and judge the wisdom-or lack thereof-of the decisions we made. We choose that path less taken and when we find ourselves all alone in the middle of the woods at night, only then do we ask, "What the fuck was I thinking? — Cameron Haley

There are moments when you stand on the brink of a new experience and understand that you have no choice about it. Either you walk into the experience or you turn away from it, but you know that no matter what you choose, you will have altered your life in a permanent way. Either way, there will be consequences. — Dennis Covington

In life, everybody faces choices between doing what's popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what's lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful. — Ben Horowitz

The principle of self-reliance grows out of a fundamental doctrine of the Church, that of agency. Just as each individual is accountable for his choices and actions in spiritual matters, so also is he accountable in temporal matters. It is through our own efforts and decisions that we earn our way in this life. While the Lord will magnify us in both subtle and dramatic ways, he can only guide our footsteps when we move our feet. Ultimately, our own actions determine our blessings or lack of them. It is a direct consequence of both agency and accountability. — Marion G. Romney

Welcome to the real-life experience of "knowledge work," and a profound operational principle: you have to think about your stuff more than you realize but not as much as you're afraid you might. As Peter Drucker wrote: "In knowledge work . . . the task is not given; it has to be determined. 'What are the expected results from this work?' is . . . the key question in making knowledge workers productive. And it is a question that demands risky decisions. There is usually no right answer; there are choices instead. And results have to be clearly specified, if productivity is to be achieved."* — David Allen

I don't know how often opportunity knocks, but temptations to make foul decisions bang on my door all day long. And smelly decisions make for smelly problems later on. A few little decisions, good or bad, can make a big difference in a life. Better to run from those skunks than with them. — Steve Goodier

Life is a choice. Your choices each day determine what outcomes happen in your life. It is by choice, not by chance, that will determine your life. An Unstoppable Life begins by taking responsibility for your choices. — Thomas Narofsky

Every brush stroke on the canvas, every dab of color introduced, the fine textures impressed in the paint - this accumulation of many small acts combines to shape a final work of art. And so it is with life; each step, each deed, each brief choice builds gradually, day by day, to shape both character and destiny. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Taking responsibility and having faith in your own judgment will help you make good choices and decisions at the end of your pet's life. — Jon Katz

If you don't want to deal with things like guilt, shame and disappointment later on in life, then you'll have t start now by making choices that won't result in those things...tomorrow's regret depends on today's decisions. If you don't want to regret your physical intimacy tomorrow, then you'll have to be living in un-regrettable physical intimacy today. — Lisa Velthouse