Future Options Quotes & Sayings

Here is an all-too-brief summary of Buffett's approach: He looks for what he calls "franchise" companies with strong consumer brands, easily understandable businesses, robust financial health, and near-monopolies in their markets, like H & R Block, Gillette, and the Washington Post Co. Buffett likes to snap up a stock when a scandal, big loss, or other bad news passes over it like a storm cloud - as when he bought Coca-Cola soon after its disastrous rollout of "New Coke" and the market crash of 1987. He also wants to see managers who set and meet realistic goals; build their businesses from within rather than through acquisition; allocate capital wisely; and do not pay themselves hundred-million-dollar jackpots of stock options. Buffett insists on steady and sustainable growth in earnings, so the company will be worth more in the future than it is today. — Benjamin Graham

Eventually, it becomes a matter of scale. When the good outweighs the bad, you stay. When the bad is the only thing you notice anymore, you think about your future, or what's left of it, consider options. — Ellen Hopkins

We must reinvent a future free of blinders so that we can choose from real options. — David Suzuki

I always started studying with the best intentions, telling myself that today just might be the day it all fell into place, and everything would be different. But more often than not, though, after a couple of pages of practice problems, I'd find myself spiraling into an all-out depression. When it was really bad, I'd put my head down on my book and contemplate alternate options for my future.
"whoa," I heard a voice say. It was muffled slightly by my hair, and my arm, which I locked around my head in an effort to keep my brain from seeping out. — Sarah Dessen

If I don't keep this job, then my only future career-options are working in Argos, or being a prostitute,' I say, wildly.
'Maybe you could work in Argos as a prostitute,' my mother says, merrily. She appears to be enjoying this conversation. 'They could list you in the catalogue, and people could queue up, and wait for you to come down the conveyor belt. — Caitlin Moran

Choosing one thing usually doesn't mean killing all of the other options forever. Oftentimes, you can always go back and change your mind if you want. If not, and you realize the decision did not pan out the way you had hoped, you now have a lesson for future decisions. — Chris Hardwick

In a world of alternative lifestyle options, strategic life planning becomes of special importance. Like lifestyle patterns, life plans of one kind or another are something of an inevitable concomitant of post-traditional social forms. Life plans are the substantial content of the reflexively organised trajectory of the self. Life-planning is a means of preparing a course of future actions mobilised in terms of the self's biography. We may also speak here of the existence of personal calendars or life-plan calendars, in relation to which the personal time of the lifespan is handled. — Anthony Giddens

I have reached a place in my life where I need to sit down and say, 'Well, what do I do? What's best for me?' I need to look into options for the future. — Michael Phelps

If you drop assumptions, and can anticipate the possibilities, you can master the art of strategy. However, if you can only manipulate probability, you can only create a path to victory. But remember, plans can break down. The future is always a step ahead of you. The key is being able to manipulate probability and plan for uncertainty. This way, you don't have to create a path to victory, but manipulate all options so that all paths lead to a victory. — Lionel Suggs

Existential nausea comes from feeling trapped. It is an affect state resulting from the feeling that the future has only bad options. — Kim Stanley Robinson

I'd love to be able to tell you a story about the future, but I'd rather tell you a story that counts. I'd rather give you a sense of where you might come from, because you need to know where you've been to know where to go. The future is your story to tell. And maybe you have more options for the future than you thought. Maybe there are different ways to see what comes next. Wear your iron goggles and walk down Dark Lane at night to see what you can see. Stand by the weir and look at the river of time. Understand that you are part of something very old and yet constantly renewed. And that you may think you can forget history, but history will certainly not forget you. We all need a cunning plan. So be cunning. — Warren Ellis

I hate how my past actions keep messing up my future options, Seth muttered.
Then you've started down the road to wisdom, Grandpa replied. — Brandon Mull

Most good decisions will involve these steps: Figure out your goal or goals. Evaluate the importance of each goal. Array the options. Evaluate how likely each of the options is to meet your goals. Pick the winning option. Later use the consequences of your choice to modify your goals, the importance you assign them, and the way you evaluate future possibilities. — Barry Schwartz

When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or nonexistent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their entire mental domain. The future cannot be separated from the present, and the present is painful beyond solace. 'This is my last experiment,' wrote a young chemist in his suicide note. 'If there is any eternal torment worse than mine I'll have to be shown. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Every time we are faced with a choice, and we are faced with them every minute of every day, we make a decision to follow its course into the future. But what of the abandoned options? Are they like unopened doors? Do alternative futures lie beyond them? How far would we wander from the course we have steered were we to go back and, just once, open Door A instead of Door B? — Mark Hodder

First, adaptability and resilience require diversity, variation, and fluctuations. Allen (2001) describes the need for this redundancy (that is, having more options or pathways that are necessary to function like a machine) as the law of excess diversity. He is saying that unless there are more pathways or options (called degrees of freedom by mathematicians) than are required to operate efficiently, there is no resilience to changing circumstances. However much diversity seems requisite (Ashby, 1956) for a system to function at a given time, more than this will be required to cope with what is likely to happen in the future. — Jean G. Boulton

Can you predict the future with absolute certainty? Your answer must be no. You have two options: You can either decide to accept yourself as an imperfect human being with limited knowledge and realize that you will at times make mistakes, or you can hate yourself for it. — David D. Burns

So that's it?" asked the expendable.
"Final decision," said Ram. "And it's the right one."
"Why do you think so?"
"Because we live or die, we'll learn something important from jumping into the fold. Thousands of future travelers will either follow us or not. But if we don't make the jump, we'll learn nothing, have no new options."
"A lovely speech. It has been sent back to Earth. It will inspire millions."
"Shut up," said Ram. — Orson Scott Card

Mara," his arms gave me a squeeze, "baby, you've got to live in the now. Not in your head. Not controlled by your fears. You can't live for what might happen five months in the future. You got issues you gotta face today. You gotta deal with them now. You got two kids who count on you and their lives aren't gonna go perfect every day because you weigh every decision you make and tread cautiously. Those options are no longer available to you. You're gonna have to live day to day and make decisions on the fly. And I'm tellin' you I'm here to help. You need it and they need it. Are you honestly gonna say no? — Kristen Ashley

The word on the street was that I had two options when it came to caring for my future baby: I could either eat, sleep, drink, bathe, walk, and work with my baby permanently affixed to my body until the two of us meld into one, or I could leave my baby out naked on a cold millstone to cry, refusing to hold or feed her until the schedule allowed. Apparently, there was no in between. — Rachel Held Evans

In the North, the sale of government bonds was the one measure for raising funds that seemed to work. Even that, however, with the lure of compounded interest to be paid in gold at a future date, failed to raise more than about half the needed amount. So the Union faced a real dilemma. The only options remaining were (1) terminate the war or (2) print fiat money. For Lincoln and the Republicans who controlled Congress, the choice was never seriously in doubt. — G. Edward Griffin

Loss of genetic diversity in agriculture is leading us to a rendezvous with extinction
to the doorstep of hunger on a scale we refuse to imagine. To simplify the environment as we have done with agriculture is to destroy the complex interrelationships that hold the natural world together. Reducing the diversity of life, we narrow our options for the future and render our own survival more precarious. — Cary Fowler

In a world in which we are exposed to more information, more options, more philosophies, more perspectives than ever before, in which we must choose the values by which we will live (rather than unquestioningly follow some tradition for no better reason than that our own parents did), we need to be willing to stand on our own judgment and trust our own intelligence-to look at the world through our own eyes-to chart our course and think through how to achieve the future we want, to commit ourselves to continuous questioning and learning-to be, in a word, self-responsible. — Nathaniel Branden

The parts of the brain corresponding to the limbic system (thought to respond only to more visceral, immediate rewards) were activated only when the decision involved comparing a reward today with one in the future. In contrast, the lateral prefrontal cortex (a more "calculating" part of the brain) responded with a similar intensity to all decisions, regardless of the timing of the options. Brains that work like this would produce a lot of failed good intentions. And indeed, we do see a lot of those, from New Year's resolutions to gym memberships that lie unused. — Abhijit V. Banerjee

Sometimes our blessings are limited. There is a tangible poverty that surrounds us. We are not offered an obvious tapestry of choices. Still, even when the choices seem bleak between a tiger's teeth or deadly fall -- every moment offers up some third options (the true potentiality within the situation), and it is in our choices (conscious or not) that a future harvest depends. — Julie Tallard Johnson

Instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the teachers union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future. — Mitt Romney

With a proven track record as a reliable, low cost producer able to meet the needs of our customers with a diversity of operations, coal qualities and transportation options, we believe we can continue our record-setting performance in the future, as the Gibson South and White Oak mines reached their full potential. — Joe Craft

And on and on, and it all sounded completely, horribly plausible. Any one of a thousand options promised - basically guaranteed - a rich, fulfilling, challenging future for him. So why did Quentin feel like he was looking around frantically for another way out? Why was he still waiting for some grand adventure to come and find him? The professors Quentin talked to about it didn't seem concerned at all. They didn't get what the problem was. What should he do? Why, anything he wanted to! — Lev Grossman

The month of April 2000 will provide an unprecedented showcase for the clean energy options available to individuals, businesses and the government, .. As tens of millions of people take action to support clean energy during Earth Month, the 'New Energy for a New Era' campaign will catapult us toward a clean and affordable energy future. — Gaylord Nelson