Forced To Choose Quotes & Sayings

If the beneficiaries of globalization are tourists who can travel as they choose, then the losers of globalization are the ones forced to wander: those who move in the shadows, those whose moving is unwanted, and those who work low-paying jobs in service to tourists (such as janitors at airports or hotel housekeepers.) — Andrew Root

At the conference I was asked whether all Yugoslav writers were now forced to live in exile. I answered that I was far more concerned about the people who were not writers who were forced into exile. Writers are familiar with the conditions of exile; exile is not foreign to writers, they often choose to live that way. Exile can be one's state of mind even while living in one's own homeland. I've chosen to live in many different countries over the years because I've always felt closer to mankind per se than to any nation in particular, even my own. Until recently it had seemed banal to say that every person is entitled to think and breathe under the same sky, but as our imperfect human race has difficulty recalling its own history, we're now obligated to state the obvious over and over again. — Nina Zivancevic

I haven't been to a temple in years, never been forced. My folks always said, marry a nice human being, religion doesn't matter. They said your god is inside you! Don't you forget that. Krishna, Jesus, Allah, are all one. Follow vegetarianism as far as you can, but you can choose your own diet, doesn't matter. Believe in god, but for you and not because the world asks you to. Forgive and forget to be at peace. Do not believe in revenge, believe in karma!! — Manasa Rao

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. — W. Clement Stone

I do believe that reality is dreadful and that you are forced to choose it in the end or go crazy, but that it kills you. — Woody Allen

No American should be forced to choose between their spouse and their country. — Andrew Sullivan

Ugh, puppy mills. These commercial breeding facilities are horrendous. The animals are kept in tiny wire cages, with little to no human interaction throughout their lives. They are rarely, if ever, seen medically and are forced to breed over and over again and watch as their babies are taken away from them and sold to pet stores. It is a supply-and-demand business, so the more people stop going to pet stores and choose to adopt instead, the quicker we can put an end to these puppy mills. — Beth Ostrosky Stern

It is a deep red flower that grows on a strong vine. Its leaves are dark and delicate. They grow best in shadowy places, but the flower itself finds stray sunbeams to bloom in." I looked at her. "That suits you. There is much of you that is both shadow and light. It grows in deep forests, and is rare because only skilled folk can tend one without harming it. It has a wondrous smell and is much sought and seldom found." I paused and made a point of examining her. "Yes, I am forced to pick, I would choose selas. — Patrick Rothfuss

A shocking ultimatum is issued; choose the victim or it defaults to someone you hold dear. And she has just minutes to decide. As each crime becomes more brutal, she is forced to play devil's advocate as she chooses the next target.
WITNESS — Caroline Mitchell

Some men [ ... ] choose to seek greatness, while others are forced to it. It is always better to choose than to be forced.
A man who is forced is never completely his own master. He must dance on the strings of those who forced him. — Robert Jordan

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

If I were forced to compare Tolstoy with Dickens, I should say that Tolstoy's appeal will probably be wider in the long run, because Dickens is scarcely intelligible outside the English-speaking culture; on the other hand, Dickens is able to reach simple people, which Tolstoy is not. Tolstoy's characters can cross a frontier, Dickens's can be portrayed on a cigarette-card. But one is no more obliged to choose between them than between a sausage and a rose. — George Orwell

You call forth the world which God has formed and that world only. Nor is this life of yours by which you set such store your doing, however you may choose to tell it. Its shape was forced in the void at the onset and all talk of what might otherwise have been is senseless for there is no otherwise. Of what could it be made? Where be hid? Or how make its appearance? The probability fo the actual is absolute. That we have no power to guess it out beforehand makes it no less certain. That we may imagine alternate histories means nothing at all. — Cormac McCarthy

Christianity is a creed embraced by billions, but rarely chosen by anyone. The same is true of Islam, whose followers now make up about one-fifth of the world's population of sex billion people. Jews are racially born into their religion. Today we have utterly forgotten that heresy derives from the Greek heraisthai, "to choose." To be heretical means to have choices and not be forced or obligated to believe what one is told to believe. A heretic is free to choose what to believe, or not to believe. — John Lamb Lash

When our people were forced out of their homes and made to walk the Trail Where They Cried, the Elders were worried because the mothers couldn't stop crying. Unlike the white man, women are revered by our People and are held as the head of the family. They hold much power within the different clans and are free to choose or reject their mate. The Elders knew there was no hope for the People if the women didn't make it to the new land. They prayed to the Creator, asking Him to give the women strength. The Creator heard, and the next morning when the soldiers made them start walking again, He told the Elders to tell the women to look back down the trail where they'd walked the day before. — C.C. Tillery

For our part, if we were forced to make a choice between the barbarians of civilization and the civilized men of barbarism, we should choose the barbarians. — Victor Hugo

In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is in conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life; and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up. — Michel De Montaigne

Children who have the freedom to explore a variety of things and discard them when they no longer make sense do not feel like failures when they choose to drop something. Instead they see it as another experience from which to learn a bit about something and a lot about themselves. This is a much better attitude than the child who is forced to stay, being told to suck it up and stick it out, who begins to feel powerless and resentful. As an adult this child is more likely, for example, to stay in an unhappy career so as not to look or feel like a failure, though he will definitely feel trapped. — Pam Laricchia

Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart. — Jeanne Marie Laskas

The central issue in that pre-mortal council was: Shall the children of God have untrammeled agency to choose the course they should follow, whether good or evil, or shall they be coerced and forced to be obedient? Christ and all who followed Him stood for the former proposition - freedom of choice; Satan stood for the latter - coercion and force. The war that began in heaven over this issue is not yet over. The conflict continues on the battlefield of mortality. And one of Lucifer's primary strategies has been to restrict our agency through the power of earthly governments. (BYU devotional held Tuesday, 16 September 1986, President Ezra Taft Benson) — Ezra Taft Benson

[These]were the legitimate acts of self-defense which had been forced upon the Irish people by English aggression... We did not initiate the war, nor were we allowed to choose the battleground. — Michael Collins

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

If someone's carrying a gun or a knife it's not a nice thing. They aren't going to feel that comfortable with it. It's a scary position to put yourself in. You don't choose to do that unless you feel there's absolutely no other option and you're forced to carry a weapon in order to protect yourself. — Scarlett Alice Johnson

Broken hearts show us we've grown out of one stage, by ripping us wide open for the next.
We're forced to choose what we do with all that pain: turn it against ourselves, aim it at someone else, or tap all that power and reach higher. — Edward Fahey

It was typical, he thought, that it had come to this. One minute he was happily selling forged certificates and making good money and the next he was forced to choose between torture, amputation or leaping into a pile of corpses. It was the kind of thing which always seemed to be happening to him. — C.S. Quinn

Discord among the ex-Soviet nationalities was fuelling an ugly brand of Russian nationalism. Voices in Moscow called for the re-conquest of Russia's 'near abroad'. For after Abkhazia, there waited several further targets for Russian intervention, including Tatarstan and Chechenia, and other non-Russian lands within the Russian Federation. Sooner or later, Russia would be forced to choose between its new-style democracy and its old-style imperialism. — Norman Davies

It pains me, my dear," I said with a distinct emotional warble in my throat, "to be forced to choose between you and the quest for the buzzard's bellybutton." I calculated my words to demonstrate the depth of my affection and the full weight of my courage. I hung my head dramatically (but sincerely!) and said, "I choose the crusty navel." Truly, her heart broke to see me go. — Andrew Peterson

You may not personally remember Vietnam or Watergate, but it's a good bet you remember "No new taxes" and "Out of the loop" and "No direct knowledge of any impropriety at this time" and "Did not inhale" and "Did not have sex with that Ms. Lewinsky" and etc. etc. It's painful to believe that the would-be "public servants" you're forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously and with such a straight face that you know they've just got to believe you're an idiot. So who wouldn't yawn and turn away, trade apathy and cynicism for the hurt of getting treated with contempt? — David Foster Wallace

I can't go on like this, I told myself. And You can't possibly want me to feel this way, I demanded of God. God didn't argue. Forced to choose between my nostalgia for the faith of my childhood and my dignity as an adult, I put down the doll and drove away. — Joanna Brooks

XAVIER: No one should be forced to live their life in any way other than how they choose. — Michelle A. Valentine

People say, 'Are you afraid? Are you scared for your life?' and I tell them: If I choose today to tone it down, if I choose today to shut up, tomorrow me, you, and all of us will be forced to. — Bassem Youssef

Forced to recognize our inhumanity, our reason coexists with our insanity. And though we choose between reality and madness, it's either sadness or euphoria. — Billy Joel

Everything in your life exists because you first made a choice about something. Choices are at the root of every one of your results. Each choice starts a behavior that over time becomes a habit. Choose poorly, and you just might find yourself back at the drawing board, forced to make new, often harder choices. Don't choose at all, and you've made the choice to be the passive receiver of whatever comes your way. — Darren Hardy

relationships you choose to make are far more important than the ones that are forced on you. She's always saying 'you have to love your family, but you don't have to like them, or want to spend time with them. — Jana Deleon

Loyalty was a great thing, but no lieutenants should be forced to choose between their leader and a circus with elephants. — Neil Gaiman

It's painful to believe that the would-be 'public servants' you're forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously and with such a straight face that you know they've just got to believe you're an idiot. — David Foster Wallace

Do you know how many nights I've spent twisting your English off my tongue? I do not take pride in your English. I want to stumble on my words. I want to speak with an accent so thick that it requires silence. I want you to struggle to understand me. Realize your English is not superior. Your English does not equate intelligence. Do not compliment me on how well I have accepted colonization. I do not want your pat on the back. I was forced to learn this language. I didn't choose to. Your English disconnects me from my people. I am deaf to my own sacred language because of your English.
Your English has done nothing for me. — Bilphena Yahwon

Don't forget, I didn't choose to come to here. I was kidnapped and forced to live here by your marvelous Pemdas warriors, who are interested in Earth only as it serves to keep 'your beautiful Pemdas' safe. Believe me when I say I would far rather be home with my friends." -Reece Bryant, The Legacy of The Key. — S.L. Morgan

The Them hesitated. Loyalty was a great thing, but no lieutenants should be forced to choose between their leader and a circus with elephants. They left. — Terry Pratchett

I have referred to it as a gift--something for which others with this affliction have taken me to task. I was only speaking from my own experience, of course, but I stand partially corrected: if it is a gift, it's the gift that just keeps on taking.

Coping with relentless assault and the accumulating damage is not easy. Nobody would ever choose to have this visited upon them. Still, this unexpected crisis forced a fundamental life decision: adopt a siege mentality--or embark upon a journey. Whatever it was--courage? acceptance? wisdom?--that finally allowed me to go down the second road (after spending a few disastrous years on the first) was unquestionably a gift--and absent this neurophysiological catastrophe, I would never have opened it, or been so profoundly enriched. That's why I consider myself a lucky man. — Michael J. Fox

What you are witnessing is the face of war a great ruler seldom sees, my lady," Master Lo Feng said to her. Her veiled face turned his way, listening. "No matter how righteous the cause, no matter who wins, the commonfolk suffer. Without plenty, the wealthy lack compassion for the poor, hoarding without sharing. Without law, the strong bully the weak, stealing by force. People will go hungry. Some will starve. Men and women will be forced to choose between feeding their parents and their children. — Jacqueline Carey

Andras Riedlmayer described a colleague who survived the siege of Sarajevo. In the winter, the scholar and his wife ran out of firewood, and so began to burn their books for heat and cooking. 'This forces one to think critically,' Riedlmayer remembered his friend saying. 'One must prioritize. First you burn old college textbooks, which you haven't read in thirty years. Then there are the duplicates. But eventually, you're forced to make tougher choices. Who burns today: Dostoevsky or Proust?' I asked Riedlmayer if his friend had any books left when the war was over. 'Oh yes,' he replied, his face lit by a flickering smile. 'He still had many books. Sometimes, he told me, you look at the books and just choose to go hungry. — Matthew Battles

Texas Republican political leaders take perverse pride in how deeply they have cut our state's education budget. Thousands of teachers have been pulled from classrooms, schools have closed and valuable programs have been canceled. In many places, districts are forced to choose between prekindergarten programs and English, algebra and art. — Wendy Davis

Gender segregated shelters are inaccessible to many trans people, and trans women in particular are often forced to choose between going into a men's shelter where they face enormous danger, or remaining street homeless and facing the violence, harassment, arrest, and exposure risks of that. — Dean Spade

Stop concentrating on NOT thinking about something, because ultimately you'll end up thinking about it. The same philosophy holds true when it comes to freeing your mind from a negative past. By persistently trying to move away from what you don't want, you are forced to think about it so much that you end up carrying its weight along with you. But if you instead choose to focus your energy on what you do want, you'll naturally leave the negative weight behind as you progress forward. — Anonymous

When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night's sleep for the chance of extra profits. — Warren Buffett

Women have shown that they truly can do anything. But the statistics are strikingly different for women with children. When a woman has her first child, the wage gap between men and women opens. David Leonhardt of The Atlantic argues that the real problem in the workplace isn't sexism, it's momism, because women do great in the workplace until they have kids. Why? In a nutshell, when forced to choose between family and work, women choose family. And in the past, women were forced to make this choice. — Anne Bogel

It's better to be hungry than to be lonely - and i'm not talking about the loneliness that we choose but the loneliness that we are forced to accept - , it's like you don't belong to this world anymore! — Paulo Coelho

When this crisis began, crucial decisions about what would happen to some of the world's biggest companies-companies employing tens of thousands of people and holding trillions of dollars in assets-took place in emergency meetings in the middle of the night. We should not be forced to choose between allowing a company to fall into a rapid and chaotic dissolution or to support the company with taxpayer money. That is unacceptable. — Barack Obama

Careful, sidhe-seer. I have chosen to spare you. Do not press your luck."
I locked my jaw, pushed myself up, and lit another match, studying my enemies in the flickering light. Both would devour me. Just in different ways. If forced to choose, I'd take death-by-Shade.
"Why have you chosen to spare me?"
"I want us to be ... what is your word? Friends."
"Psychotic rapists don't have friends."
"I was unaware you were psychotic rapist or I would not have offered. — Karen Marie Moning

There's what you're forced to do, there's what you choose, and everything else - most things - are a mix. At best, you'll spend your life trying not to get hurt, but trying not to do the hurting, either. You won't always come through, but it's the best anyone can do. It's the trying I'd call good. — Alexandra Duncan

Life doesn't always give us a choice between right and wrong. Occasionally, we are forced to choose between two rights or two wrongs... — Assegid Habtewold

The time will come when you will be forced to make a choice," Hanalea said. "When that time comes, choose love. — Cinda Williams Chima

My mom was a manic depressive schizophrenic who, after a year in prison, went home and shot herself. My sister, Kirsten, an amazing poet, who was raised by this woman, and was dating a guy who broke up with her for the fourth time in three weeks. And one day, she came to his house, got a gun, and blew her brains out all over his headboard. I just went through a divorce, five years in court and cost me $2 million dollars. If anyone, by law, should be forced to take antidepressants it's me ... But instead, I choose to be an antidepressant. And you can take me with alcohol. — Christopher Titus

If forced to choose between a book and a Kindle, I'd opt for the comfort and ease of bound pages. I mean, I can't break a book if I drop it on a cement floor. — Jen Lancaster

First, God does not send people to hell. He simply honors their choice. Hell is the ultimate expression of God's high regard for the dignity of man. He has never forced us to choose Him, even when that means we would choose Hell. — Max Lucado

Nick lowered his head, licking his lips. "I never thanked you for what you did."
"What?"
"Ty is my best friend," Nick said. "He's been the most constant thing I've had in my life. I know if you had forced him to choose between us, he would have chosen you. And he should have," Nick added quickly with a glance at Zane. "Thank you for not making him choose. — Abigail Roux

Barbara felt lightheaded, almost dizzy with what she was about to say. But she said it anyway. "As you wish, Your Majesty. In that case, I am afraid I must resign my position as Baba Yaga. If I am forced to choose between the work I was destined to do and the man I was destined to love, I choose the man. — Deborah Blake

It is in this sense that responsibility is liberty; the more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose. — Thornton Wilder

If humans are not required to earn a living to be provided survival needs, many are going to want very much to be productive, but not at those tasks they did not choose to do but were forced to accept in order to earn money. Instead, humans will spontaneously take upon themselves those tasks that world society really needs to have done. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Walk any path in Destiny's garden, and you will be forced to choose, not once but many times. — Neil Gaiman

She wasn't afraid of difficulties; what frightened her was being forced to choose one particular path.
Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live and she was always thinking that, in future, she might regret the choices she made now.
'I'm afraid of committing myself,' she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none.
Even in that most important area of her life, love, she had failed to commit herself. After her first romantic dissappointment, she had never again given herself entirely. She feared pain, loss and separation. These things were inevitable on the path to love, and the only way of avoiding them was by deciding not to take that path at all. In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love. It was like putting out your own eyes in order not to see the bad things in life. — Paulo Coelho

I was forced to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there, and to choose, in the face of it all, not death but life. — Henri Nouwen

Pg 619 If he had been left to choose rather than forced to learn — Hanya Yanagihara

What would one do if one were forced to choose between saving an innocent child's life or engaging in unchaste behavior? This is, after all, the choice that some unfortunate women are put to - sell their bodies, or see their children starve. — Courtney Milan

And do you know what a full-fledged war would look like, Percy?"
"Bad?" I guessed.
"Imagine the world in chaos. Nature at war with itself. Olympians forced to choose sides between Zeus amd Poseidon. Destruction. Carnage. Millions dead. Western civilization turned into a battleground so big it will make the Trojan War look like a water-balloon fight."
"Bad," I repeated. — Rick Riordan

I am not saying people should not be free to join whichever reason they choose but should we be forced to live our lives around a belief system that originated somewhere around the fourth or fifth century BC. I cannot see any more reason to base a belief system around Christianity, Judaism or Islam than I can around Lord of the Rings. — Alan Moore

Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes. — Will Durant

Civic duty? Perhaps it would be a little naive to try to coerce me into voting. I assure you my basic standards of healthy living are very different from yours, which is the reason I do not vote. You should note that, as nonsensical a scenario, if forced to choose I would most definitely rather live in a failing, Christ-honoring, God-fearing nation than a flourishing one that mocks said Creator. Beware of my personal ambitions. — Criss Jami

We did not choose to believe that personal choice is the highest human virtue. Rather, we were taught, formed, forced to believe nothing is important in life other than that which we have personally chosen. The irony is that the belief that nothing is important in life other than that which we have personally chosen is a belief that we have not personally chosen! The supermarket and shopping mall have been our school. — William Henry Willimon

Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny. — Jared Diamond

If you choose to do something, then you shouldn't say it's a sacrifice, because nobody forced you to do it. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Political society wants things simple. Political scientists know them to be complex ... One could argue that, in part, the leftist impulse is so conspicuous among the educated and well-to-do precisely because they are exposed to more information, and are accordingly forced to choose between living with the strains of complexity, or lapsing into simplism. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

If people knew how badly animals were treated in today's factory farms, if people knew how completely confined and immobilized these creatures are for their entire lives, if people knew how severe and unrelenting is the cruelty these animals are forced to endure, there would be change. If people knew. But too many of us choose to look the other way, to keep the veil in place, to remain unconscious and caught in the cultural trance. That way we are more comfortable. That way is convenient. That way we don' t have to risk too much. This is how we keep ourselves asleep. — John Robbins

The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark. — W.B.Yeats

I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or anyone telling a story) was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian. — Howard Zinn

We are forced to choose, for the processes we have initiated in our lifetime cannot continue in the lifetime of our children. Whatever we do either creates the framework for continuing the supreme adventure of life and consciousness on this planet or sets the stage for its termination. The choice before us is urgent and important: it can neither be postponed nor ignored. — Ervin Laszlo

Our gods, if we choose to believe in them, must be forced to live up to ethics that far surpass our own human standards. If they fall short of the ethical conditions we place upon ourselves, what use are they to us - except to rationalize our own failures? — Stifyn Emrys

The loan crisis and the increasing slashing of funds for students, coupled with the astronomical rise in tuition, represent an unparalleled attack on the social state. The hidden agenda here is that when students graduate with such high debts, they rarely choose a career in public service; instead, they are forced to go into the corporate sector, and I see these conditions, in some ways, as being very calculated and as part of a larger political strategy to disempower students. — Henry Giroux

The lack of effective and charismatic leaders always forced the Muslim youth to choose the wrong role models. — S. Hussain Zaidi

With the loss of Free Choice Vouchers, hundreds of thousands of workers will now be forced to choose between their employers' unaffordable insurance or going without health care. — Ron Wyden

Heavy is the head that holds the pen of creation. We construct these characters from nothing, molding them from our imaginations. We give them hopes and dreams and unique personalities until they feel so real you're mind believes it must be so. We watch them grow by our hands, not always knowing the paths they will choose with the obstacles we throw at them. They take on a life of their own and often surprise even us by their actions we couldn't have imagined before it poured out of us onto the paper. We could change it if we really wanted to, but it would be forced and not be true to the characters. And when something tragic happens and one is lost, we feel that loss even though we know they were not a friend, a family member or even ourselves. It can be a hard thing to voice sometimes, to give tribute to the one's left behind with the real sadness over something not so real. But we find the words and press on to the next challenge, because that's what good writers do. — Jennifer A. Marsh

It is a second-generation Seattle-scene record label; all of its artists are young people who came to Seattle after they graduated college in search of the legendary Seattle music scene and discovered that it didn't really exist
it was just a couple of dozen guys who sat around playing guitar in one another's basements
and so who were basically forced to choose between going home in ignominy or fabricating the Seattle Music scene of their imagination from whole cloth. This led to the establishment of any number of small clubs, and the foundation of many bands, that were not rooted in any kind of authentic reality whatsoever but merely reflected the dreams and aspiration of pan-global young adults who had flocked to Seattle on the same chimera hunt. — Neal Stephenson

People are constantly forced to choose between having freedom and having success and stability; freedom with suffering or happiness without freedom. The majority choose the latter. — Svetlana Alexievich

Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. — Oscar Wilde

True freedom is the gift of the Spirit, the result of grace: but, precisely because it is freedom FOR as well as freedom FROM, it isn't simply a matter of being forced now to be good, against our wills and without our cooperation, but a matter of being released from slavery precisely into responsibility, into being able at last to choose, to exercise moral muscle, knowing both that one is doing it oneself and that the Spirit is at work within, that God himself is doing that which I too am doing. — N. T. Wright

One comforting thing about the Trump White House is that you aren't forced to choose between malice and incompetence. — Garry Kasparov

A man must be forced to choose. It is only when you are forced to choose that you know what is important to you. — Chaim Potok

I wanted to know how much of conversion was forced - that is, forced in the sense that the Inquisition forced people to choose - forced Jews, let's say, and Muslims to choose conversion to Christianity or death. I wanted to see how much of conversion historically was forced in that way and how much of it was really a kind of persuasion. — Susan Jacoby

When the ship is sinking and you're forced to choose sides, the new solution is to jump from island to island to island. You don't have to pick. — Shia Labeouf

No one should ever be forced to choose between food and education, or medicine and shelter when they don't have the resources. It's very unfair. — Rachel Brosnahan

We can never know," Simon answered slowly. "God hides the future from man's eyes. We are forced to choose, not knowing. I have chosen Jesus. — Elizabeth George Speare

Individuals are forced to make choices in an environment they did not choose. They would surely prefer to have a broader array of good opportunities. The question we should be asking - not instead of but in addition to questions about penal policy - is whether the denizens of the ghetto are entitled to a better set of options, and if so, whose responsibility it is to provide them. — Michelle Alexander

IF A MAN is forced to choose between the truth and his father, only a fool chooses the truth. — Greg Iles

I worry about exposing him to bands like Journey, the appreciation of which will surely bring him nothing but the opprobrium of his peers. Though he has often been resistant - children so seldom know what is good for them - I have taught him to appreciate all the groundbreaking musicmakers of our time - Big Country, Haircut 100, Loverboy - and he is lucky for it. His brain is my laboratory, my depository. Into it I can stuff the books I choose, the television shows, the movies, my opinion about elected officials, historical events, neighbors, passersby. He is my twenty-four-hour classroom, my captive audience, forced to ingest everything I deem worthwhile. He is a lucky, lucky boy! And no one can stop me. — Dave Eggers

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

Forgiveness is not a moral issue.
It is an energy dynamic ...
Forgiveness means that you do not carry the baggage of an experience.
When you choose not to forgive,
the experience that you do not forgive sticks with you.
When you choose not to forgive,
it is like agreeing to wear dark, gruesome sunglasses that distort everything,
and it is you who are forced every day
to look at life through those contaminated lenses
because you have chosen to keep them. — Gary Zukav

Chinese workers are not forced into factories because of our insatiable desire for iPods. They choose to leave their homes in order to earn money, to learn new skills and to see the world. — Leslie T. Chang

I see the tragedy in living an all-or-nothing existence, in teetering on top of that skyscraper and feeling forced to choose between standing paralyzed in fear or hurling myself over the edge in ecstasy. I recognize the pain of white-knuckling my way through life. I recognize the internal chaos of barreling through life in bouts of mania and depression. The alternative, the middle ground, is balance. It's not wishing to stay or fall; its remaining upright, respecting the boundary of the rooftop and admiring exhilaration, the strength, of standing so high. — Andie Mitchell

If we were forced to choose just one, there would be no way to deny that Judaism is the most important intellectual development in human history. — David Gelernter