Free Choice Quotes & Sayings

The so-called 'Employee Free Choice Act' envisions a world where workers would be denied privacy and forced to vote in an atmosphere of intimidation. — Mike Pence

The free-will of man cannot impune the sovereignty of God, and conversely the sovereignty of God would not impune the free-will of men. — R. Alan Woods

From the beginning of time until the present moment, man's ungodly quest for power, his determination to use his gift of free choice for his own selfish ends, has brought him to the brink of doom. — Billy Graham

As long as you are free, you are free to select and choose alternatives, provided that you are willing to accept the responsibility for being free. And after you've tried your alternatives, and they don't work as you would wish, don't blame me. Blame your choice. Try another alternative. — Leo Buscaglia

Letting go of our ideas about how life should go is a choice that sets life's magic free. — Melody Beattie

I believe instinct's the iron skeleton under all our ideas of free will. Unless you're willing to take the pipe or eat the gun or take a long walk off a short dock, you can't say no to some things. You can't refuse to pick up your option because there is no option. — Stephen King

Free choice is the greatest gift God gives to his children. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation. — George Bernard Shaw

[The] type of education now prevailing all over the world is directed against human freedom. State-controlled education ... deprives people of their free choice, creativity and brilliance. — Muammar Al-Gaddafi

Once you accept the fact that people have 'individual choices' and they're 'free' to make those choices. Free to make choices means without being influenced and I can't understand that at all. All of us are influenced in all our choices by the culture we live in, by our parents, and by the values that dominate. So, we're influenced. So there can't be free choices. — Jacque Fresco

I was a teenager, we were pretty much fully indoctrinated, thanks to sexual scare tactics. I remember so many public-health commercials with a B-actor in a fake alley background warning us to use protection or telling us the only real safe choice was abstinence. We were highly frightened of sex from day one. There was no free-swinging '90s. — Michael Stipe

Any group or "collective," large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the "rights" of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking ... A group, as such, has no rights. — Ayn Rand

God wants us to choose to love him freely, even when that choice involves pain, because we are committed to him, not to our own good feelings and rewards. He wants us to cleave to him, as Job did, even when we have every reason to deny him hotly. That, I believe, is the central message of Job. Satan had taunted God with the accusation that humans are not truly free. Was Job being faithful simply because God had allowed him a prosperous life? Job's fiery trials proved the answer beyond doubt. Job clung to God's justice when he was the best example in history of God's apparent injustice. He did not seek the Giver because of his gifts; when all gifts were removed he still sought the Giver. — Philip Yancey

In the United States [ ... ] the two main business-dominated parties, with the support of the corporate community, have refused to reform laws that make it virtually impossible to create new political parties (that might appeal to non-business interests) and let them be effective. Although there is marked and frequently observed dissatisfaction with the Republicans and Democrats, electoral politics is one area where notions of competitions and free choice have little meaning. In some respects the caliber of debate and choice in neoliberal elections tends to be closer to that of the one-party communist state than that of a genuine democracy. — Robert W. McChesney

The question of place and climate is most closely related to the question of nutrition. Nobody is free to live everywhere; and whoever has to solve great problems that challenge all his strength actually has a very restricted choice in this matter. The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I do not believe any power can possess the mind of a man or woman ... I believe in God-given free will, you see. I think nothing is forced on us, except by other people like ourselves. I think our choices are our own. — Susan Cooper

Freedom is not the ability to do whatever you want. Freedom is the strength of character to do what is good, true, noble, and right. — Matthew Kelly

Meg," he whispered. "It wouldn't be real love if there weren't the possibility for another response to him. If we couldn't choose not to love him, then our love would be empty. That's why there's evil in this world, because there's free choice in this world. He allows the one to prove the other. — Laura Anderson Kurk

What people have the capacity to choose, they have the ability to change. — Madeleine K. Albright

I knew now what my earlier passion for Harry had hidden from me. That although I had bedded him as a free woman I was as bound as if I were the slave. For it was not a free choice. I had wanted him because he was the Squire, not for himself ... And it was no free choice, because I could not choose to say "No." My safety and security on the land meant I had to keep my special, costly hold on its owner. I paid him rent as surely as the tenants who came to my round rent table with their coins tied up in a scrap of cloth. When I lay on my back, or strode round the room threatening him with every imaginable, ridiculous torment, I was paying my dues. And the knowledge galled me. — Philippa Gregory

As free as you allow others to be, such freedom you create for yourself. — Bryant McGill

We must wholeheartedly believe in free will. If free will is a reality, we shall have made the correct choice. If it is not, we shall still not have made an incorrect choice, becauee we shall not have made any choice at all, not having a free will to do so. — Edward Norton Lorenz

We have choice," she insisted. "This is it. We don't get to choose our choices, Gwain, we just get to make the ones we're given ... — Dianna Hardy

You marry out of free will. If I marry, it will be from a personal choice, not some social compulsion or norm. — Sonam Kapoor

What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Christmas was a response of the choice of mankind to take its existence into its own hands and chart its own course, liberally scripting its own ethics, crafting its own moral system, and choosing to believe that it was the creator and therefore master of its fate. Christmas is a response to mankind reeling off the pages of history and splattering the blood of lives and generations wasted along its free-wheeling course. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

But why is God so slow in conquering the forces of evil? Why does not God break in and smash the evil schemes of wicked men? ... We are responsible human beings, not blind automatons; persons, not puppets. By endowing us with freedom, God relinquished a measure of his own sovereignty and imposed certain limitations upon himself. If his children are free, they must do his will by a voluntary choice. Therefore, God cannot at the same time impose his will upon his children and also maintain his purpose for man. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The myth of "free choice" begins with "free market" and "free trade". When five transnational corporations control the seed market, it is not a free market, it is a cartel. — Vandana Shiva

Once you start settling, and letting others control your life, it can quickly become a habit, so it's best to avoid such things altogether. — A.J. Darkholme

Plants or animals rarely behave in an unnatural manner that's contrary to their true makeup. Human beings are also natural beings, but at the same time, we're conscious entities. We therefore have free will and must make the choice not merely to be part of nature, but also to follow faithfully the laws of nature. — H.E. Davey

In order to be truly free, you must desire to know the truth more than you want to feel good. Because, if feeling good is your goal, then as soon as you feel better you will lose interest in what is true. This does not mean that feeling good or experiencing love and bliss is a bad thing. Given the choice, anyone would choose to feel bliss rather than sorrow. It simply means that if this desire to feel good is stronger than the yearning to see, know, and experience Truth, then this desire will always be distorting the perception of what is Real, while corrupting one's deepest integrity. — Adyashanti

Of course I believe in free will. Do we have a choice? — Isaac Bashevis Singer

There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed. — Alain De Botton

Plato spoke of the Sisters of Fate on the last 3 pages of his book, "The Republic" when he said: "Then the Sisters of Fate take all of our choices and weave them on their loom into the fabric of destiny. Hear the word of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. Mortal souls, behold a new cycle of life and mortality. Your genius will not be allotted to you, but you will choose your genius; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue is free, and as a man honors' or dishonors her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the chooser - God is justified" [Quote from Plato's Republic written 360BCE In the Public Domain] — D.M. Hoover

Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas - that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it! — Aldous Huxley

It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Freedom is free from fears, choice of faith. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Free will is absolute when the choice is right — Sunday Adelaja

The history of free men is never written by chance but by choice - their choice. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Even if sexual orientation were a choice, aren't we a country where we're supposed to be free to pursue our happiness, whether we're hetero-, homo-, bi-, trans-, or even a-sexual? To use [an analogy that homosexuality is a vice, like drinking], being antigay is like Prohibition, when a small group of busybodies thought no one should be allowed to drink. — Alex Sanchez

Hope is one of the three great Christian virtues because Christ Himself is the master of life and therefore the master of hope. We are free to choose because we were made free from the beginning, and He honors our agency and our right and ability to choose. The choice He offers is life, and life offers hope. Any other choice is a choice of spiritual death that will bring us into the power of the devil ... Part of that hope in Christ is hope in the future, a future that includes resurrection and salvation and exaltation. — Chieko N. Okazaki

They'd begun to back down the long drive when he saw two little boys run out from behind Nate and Tamsyn. The DarkRiver male picked up the children and said something that made both his mate and the boys laugh. Judd looked away. That wasn't his life and it never would be. Yet even knowing that, Brenna had made her choice very clear.
And if she decided later that she wanted out?
The darkness, the badness in him, bared its teeth. Tonight-maybe tonight-he could set her free. After that, she'd have to kill him to get away. — Nalini Singh

My escape route was to emphasize the
idea of "choice." If a woman had a
right to wear a miniskirt, surely I had the right to choose my headscarf. My choice was a sign of my independence
of mind. Surely, to choose to wear
what I wanted was an
assertion of my feminism. I was a feminist, wasn't I?
But I was to learn that
choosing to wear the hijab is much easier than choosing to take it off. And that lesson was an important reminder of how truly "free" choice is. — Mona Eltahawy

The laws of chess do not permit a free choice: you have to move whether you like it or not. — Emanuel Lasker

A Rule: Life without Islam is a naked tree,
Birds without trees can never feel free. — Leena Ahmad Almashat

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years. — Oscar Wilde

City of God interprets all of the human story, from Creation to the Last Judgment, as the drama of divine providence and human free choice, especially the choice between the two most fundamental options of membership in one or the other of the "two cities." The City of God is the invisible community of all who love God; the City of the World is all those who love the world and themselves as their God. — Peter Kreeft

You make choices that are good and sound, but the gods have other plans for you. — Lisa See

Our minds are information vacuums. Either we fill them with thoughts of our choosing or someone else will. — Ray A. Davis

People who taught me that no accident of birth--not being black or relatively poor, being from Baltimore or the Bronx or fatherless--would ever define or limit me. In other words, they helped me to discover what it means to be free...My only wish--and I know Wes feels the same--is that the boys (and girls) who come after us will know this freedom. It's up to us, all of us, to make a way for them. — Wes Moore

So Thomas Pynchon wants a private life and no photographs and nobody to know his home address. I can dig it, I can relate to that (but, like, he should try it when it's compulsory instead of a free-choice option). — Salman Rushdie

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character. — Ayn Rand

Conversation between Susan's therapist and Spenser -
"And when you find her? Then what?"
"Then she will be free again to come here and work with you until she can make the choices she wishes to make."
"And what if you are not that choice?"
"I think I will be. But I can't control that. What I can do is see that she's free to choose. — Robert B. Parker

It is for you to choose. Choice is man's right, and for that I leave you free. — Mary Stewart

Directors of a large food-manufacturing firm ( ... At one extreme (: one) said it was not his job to protect people from themselves; he was not forcing people to eat his products, and if they chose to do so at the risk of harming themselves, it was of their own free choice. — John Yudkin

We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our Liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good. — John Adams

Human agency, the ability to affect the surrounding world, may be a result not so simply of conscious choice - but instead a result of training unconscious habits beforehand. — Quelle Wikipedia

In further institutionalizing the great power of the majority, we are making the individual come to distrust himself. We are giving him a rationalization for the unconscious urging to find an authority that would resolve the burdens of free choice. We are tempting him to reinterpret the group pressures as a release, authority as freedom, and that this quest assumes a moral guise makes it only the more poignant. — William H. Whyte

It does not matter what name you attach to it, but your consciousness must ascend to the point through which you view the universe with your God-centered nature. The feeling accompanying this experience is that of complete oneness with the Universal Whole ... This God-centered nature is constantly awaiting to govern your life gloriously. You have the free will to either allow it to govern your life, or not to allow it to affect you. The choice is always yours! — Peace Pilgrim

Several amendments should be made to the primary and general election laws to improve them, but such changes must in no way interfere with a full and free expression of the people's choice in naming the candidates to be voted on at general elections. — Arthur Capper

The fact that everyone between seventeen and thirty-five or so is liable to be (as Nim put it) "tied down to childbearing," implies that no one is quite so thoroughly "tied down" here as women, elsewhere are likely to be
psychologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the same risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Few understand that horses are never truly domesticated. Their instincts are always there and readily take over once they are free. They stay or return to us by their choice, not the compulsion forced upon them.
Once realized you must also recognize only kindness will prevail to make a partner of an animal who'd prefer only the company of his kind and the freedom of wide open spaces. Any other relationship is based on the inadequacies of the tormentor on the tormented. One will lose. It's always the horse, for even if he wins his defensive battle the mark of rogue will remain.
It's been witnessed how a mustang will give up his life if his freedom can't be regained when in the grip of adversity. There's so much for us to learn from this, if we'd only learn to listen to their message. — Judith-Victoria Douglas

Men imagine that the choices before them are theirs to make. But we are free to act only upon what is given. Choice is lost in the maze of generations and each act in that mazeis itself an enslavement for it voids every alternate and binds one ever more tightly in to the constraints that make a life. — Cormac McCarthy

Real Understanding manifests itself as spontaneous natural and simple action, free of the depressing process of choice, pure without indecisions of any type. — Samael Aun Weor

I desire not to desire, for my will is without value, since I am ignorant in any case. Therefore choose Thou for me what thou knowest to be best and do not put my perdition in what my autonomy and free choice prefer. — Bayazid Bastami

Things I learned from a man called "The Nazarene"
1- Being poor does not equal being miserable.
2- People will judge you, but their judgment should not define who you are.
3- Going against what others hold as true is not necessarily a bad thing.
4- Everyone is sacred.
5- Life is sometimes a lonely and dry place, like desert, but those times are there to help us meditate on what is truly important in our lives.
6- Complaining or getting angry because there is a storm in our lives solves nothing; embrace the storm and keep calm.
7- Treasure and protect the children of the world, they hold the key of what is pure and innocent; they are the way to freedom.
8- We are free to be who we want to be, it is our choice to be slaves or kings.
9- Fear nothing.
10- The person you don't like is also your neighbor.
11- The words following "I AM" define who we are, we must choose wisely. — Martin Suarez

Man has free choice, or otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would be in vain. — Thomas Aquinas

One could guess that there was the delicate forethought of a mother behind this choice of the pavillon for Albert: while not wanting to be separated from her son, she nevertheless realized that a young man of the viscount's age needed all his freedom. On the other hand, it must be said that one could also recognize in this the intelligent egoism of the young man, the son of wealthy parents, who enjoyed the benefits of a free and idle life, which was gilded for him like a birdcage. — Alexandre Dumas

Hell is a consequence of one's own free choice. It would not exist if free choice did not exist or, better, if free choice were not used badly. It is not imposed arbitrarily from the outside by pitiless gods but grows logically from inside a human soul. It is the result of someone's making himself what he wants to be, not what God wants him to be. — James V. Schall

Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

God maintains a delicate balance between keeping his existence sufficiently evident so people will know he's there and yet hiding his presence enough so that people who want to choose to ignore him can do it. This way, their choice of destiny is really free. — J.P. Moreland

Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before? — Joan Didion

I lost my voice and my best friend too
On swift, fierce winds and wings of blue,
The cold rain fell where beams had shone,
So I wrapped up tight and safe. Alone.

But I missed my friend, I missed my voice,
And my heart still whispered of another choice
To break out of my binding, safe, and warm,
And see what the world looked like after the storm.

So I struggled free and was greeted by
Colorful brushstrokes across the sky,
The melody of the summer breeze
And blue wings like mine in hazel trees.

On the soft, sweet air of the mountain glade,
We gathered together in cool, green shade,
And told our stories, beginnings to ends,
And found our song in the hearts of new friends. — Elaine Vickers

The fool will pay anything to live a few more years on earth, but the fool rejects the free gift of everlasting life. Salvation is a wise choice. — Felix Wantang

Weapons are inauspicious instruments, not the tools of the enlightened. When there is no choice but to use them, it is best to be calm and free from greed, and not celebrate victory. Those who celebrate victory are bloodthirsty, and the bloodthirsty cannot have their way with the world. — Sun Tzu

If the choice is given to us of liberty or security, we must scorn the latter with the proper contempt of free man and the sound judgment of wise men who know that liberty and security are not incompatible in the lives of honest men. — James Farley

Freedom includes the freedom to be foolish, to be sick. Free choice includes the freedom to choose badly. — Peter Huber

I can't take this kind of suspense. Decide now." He untied the ropes around her wrists. "Walk out the door. In a year you'll be free of any entanglements with me. Or stay and be my wife. My real wife. Make your choice."
She looked down at the loosened ropes still wrapped around her, then up at him.
He wore an expression of fierce indifference, but she knew better. This proud man, this noble marquees, had made up his mind he wished to marry her without knowing who she was or what she'd done. She would guess the decision was his first impetuous gesture since the day his mother had disappeared.
Amy couldn't fool herself. For him to go so contrary to his own nature, he must feel an overwhelming emotion for her. — Christina Dodd

After all is said and done, you are free to choose but you are not free from the consequence of your choice. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Feminism means having a choice. And feminism doesn't care which choices you make, either. Just that you have them. The point has never been to establish some principled refusal to give yourself to another human being. The point is to make sure you can give yourself
or not give yourself
of your free will. — Rachel Kadish

When the psychiatrist approves of a person's actions, he judges that person to have acted with "free choice"; when he disapproves,he judges him to have acted without "free choice." It is small wonder that people find "free choice" a confusing idea: "free choice" appears to refer to what the person being judged (often called the "patient") does, whereas it is actually what the person making the judgment (often a psychiatrist or other mental health worker) thinks. — Thomas Szasz

The reality is that the special interest groups that have lobbied against Free Choice Vouchers object to any measure that would empower employees to have a say in their health benefits because it begins to erode their power in the current health care system. — Ron Wyden

The whole struggle was over, and yet there seemed to have been no moment of victory. You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say he had delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged in unassailable freedom. Ransom could not for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heart on the subject. — C.S. Lewis

I go of my free choice, with the blessing of obedience. — Mother Teresa

In one lifetime it wouldn't be possible to find another woman with whom he can learn to be so free, whom he can please with such abandon and expertise. By some accident of character, it's familiarity that excites him more than sexual novelty. He supects there's something numbed or deficient or timid in himself ( ... ) [M]ight look like virtue or doggedness, but it's neither of these because he exercises no real choice. This is what he has to have: possession, belonging, repetition. — Ian McEwan

The course of human history consists of a series of encounters between individual human beings and God in which each man and woman or child, in turn, is challenged by God to make his free choice between doing God's will and refusing to do it. — Arnold J. Toynbee

Free your mind from all that troubles you; God will take care of things. You will be unable to make haste in this (choice) without, so to speak, grieving the heart of God, because he sees that you do not honor him sufficiently with holy trust. Trust in him, I beg you, and you will have the fulfillment of what your heart desires. — St. Vincent

One Choice, Breaks free of his past
One Choice, Embraces his future
One Choice, Exposes the dangers
One Choice, Changes him- forever
One Choice will free him — Veronica Roth

A mission is not just a casual thing-it is not an alternative program in the Church. Neither is a mission a matter of choice any more than tithing is a choice, any more than sacrament meeting is a choice, any more than the Word of Wisdom is a choice. Of course, we have our free agency, and the Lord has given us choices. We can do as we please. We can go on a mission or we can remain home. But every normal young man is as much obligated to go on a mission as he is to pay his tithing, attend his meetings, keep the Sabbath day holy, and keep his life spotless and clean. — Spencer W. Kimball

The bible doesn't say Jesus had a power to command, only to recommend, which leaves each one of us with an individual freedom of choice. Maybe it's just that there are too many of us making too many bad choices for the good of the whole." He took a bite out of his apple. "Too many people and none of us wanting or able to hear the harmony. — Bryan Islip

True independence is not based on fear. It contains within it an ability to be close to others, coupled with a choice to be free and autonomous. — Gay Hendricks

For what is man without desires, without free will, and without the power of choice but a stop in an organ pipe? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Man doeth this and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knows not to what end his sense doth prompt him; for when he strikes he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance. Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath
all those things are needful, one to the other, and who knows the end of each? — H. Rider Haggard

If people believe that they are marrying out of love and free choice rather than out of duty, they are more likely to decide, if love should die, that the free choice to join together is no more significant than the free choice to part, and to look for love elsewhere; those married out of duty expect less love to begin with, and what duty has brought together, duty may keep together. — Stephen L. Carter

It's true that we are free to do whatever we want, even go to France on a whim. We can make any choice we want. We can do anything we want. We just have to not care about consequences. — Maureen F. McHugh

One thing's for sure: if you decide to be courageous and sane, if you decide not to overspend or overcommit or overschedule, the healthy people in your life will respect those choices. And the unhealthy people in your life will freak out, because you're making a healthy choice they're not currently free to make. Don't for one second let that stop you. — Shauna Niequist

Much later, when I understood what perfection was, I realized that to become a saint one must suffer a great deal, always seek what is best, and forget oneself. I understood that there were many kinds of of sanctity and that each soul was free to respond to the approaches of Our Lord and to do little or much for Him - in other words,to make a choice among the sacrifices He demands. — Therese Of Lisieux

You can't understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it's always clear whom you love. But a girl's in a position of suspense, with all a woman's or maiden's modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust, - a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say. — Leo Tolstoy

The man who can keep order can rule the world, but the man who can bear disorder is truly free. — Gillian Cross

Free will isn't always about choice; often weakness plays the game — Jeyn Roberts