How We Decide Quotes & Sayings

You're going to die. You're going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we're just going to be gone. The world's going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself. — Bob Dylan

I decide this is just A Bad Day. We all get them, because grief doesn't care how many years it's been. — Sara Barnard

If there were no such normative truths, nothing would matter, and we would have no reasons to try to decide how to live. Such decisions would be arbitrary. We would not be the animals that can understand and respond to reasons. In a world without reasons, we would act only on our instincts and desires, living as other animals live. The Universe would not contain rational beings. — Derek Parfit

Shit, man, democracy failed before it started.

Who thought it was a good idea to let the masses of fucktards decide anything?

[Guess I've got more faith in people.]

People? The election of 2044 -- Curls Bellberry, a boy band presidency on the platform that the Earth is flat and that he'd nuke New York to save Social Security. There's a good reason he was the last president.

Problem with letting people pick a leader is they gravitate towards confident sociopaths no matter how stupid they are.

It's the perception of qualification that fools people.

At least by having corporate executives rule us we get folks who are good at business.

Life hurts, the world is fucked, and that's not going to change. . . — Rick Remender

We can't change it. We have to decide how we'll respond. — Randy Pausch

Today there is a deep longing in our culture to reconnect to this spiritual world, for we are not whole without it. But our longing cannot be satisfied by embracing religious belief alone, no matter how emotional the embrace, for our longing is at root a hunger and thirst for the experience of interior realities. If, however, we are to forge a new relationship to the invisible world of spirit based on experience, what will distinguish it from the past is the modern necessity that it be based on our own autonomy as free individuals, able to think, decide, and act for ourselves. — Jeremy Nadler

Children should also be taught that success and fulfillment come from inside, and it is only inside that matters. Each of us is responsible for how we feel, what we wish for, and how we decide to approach life's challenges. The highest responsibility is fulfilled not by doing a huge amount of work but by doing the work of spirit in an attitude of joy and creativity. This is the only way that life without struggle becomes possible. — Deepak Chopra

We look high and low for God, but somehow He's not there. So we blame Him and tell ourselves that He must have forgotten us. Or else we decide that He left us long ago, if He was ever around."
"How strange," the little fish said, "to miss what is everywhere."
"Very strange," the old whale agreed. "Doesn't it remind you of fish who say they're thirsty? — Michael Jackson

no matter how many wrong choices we've made in the past, we can always decide to make the right ones today. The past need not determine one moment of the future. The — Lisa Wingate

In obedience to God's Word we should fight to walk in the paths where he has promised his blessings. But when and how they come is God's to decide, not ours. If they delay, we trust the wisdom of our Father's timing, and we wait. In this way joy remains a gift, while we work patiently in the field of obedience and fight against the weeds and the crows and the rodents. Here is where joy will come. Here is where Christ will reveal himself (John 14:21). But that revelation and that joy will come when and how Christ chooses. It will be a gift. — John Piper

The appropriation of public money always is perfectly lovely until some one is asked to pay the bill. If we are to have a billion dollars of navy, half a billion of farm relief, [etc. ] the people will have to furnish more revenue by paying more taxes. It is for them, through their Congress, to decide how far they wish to go. — Calvin Coolidge

In any case, I hope that it will be a good thing when we understand how our minds are built, and how they support the modes of thought that we like to call emotions. Then we'll be better able to decide what we like about them, and what we don't - and bit by bit we'll rebuild ourselves. I don't think that most people will bother with this, because they like themselves just as they are. Perhaps they are not selfish enough, or imaginative, or ambitious. Myself, I don't much like how people are now. We're too shallow, slow, and ignorant. I hope that our future will lead us to ideas that we can use to improve ourselves. — Marvin Minsky

As the Laurel-wreathed boxes come down to Gamma, I think about how clever it really is. They won't let us win the Laurel. They don't care that the math doesn't work. They don't care that the young scream in protest and the old moan their same tired wisdoms. This is just a demonstration of their power. It is their power. They decide the winner. A game of merit won by birth. It keeps the hierarchy in place. It keeps us striving, but never conspiring.

Yet despite the disappointment, some part of us doesn't blame the Society. We blame Gamma, who receives the gifts. A man's only got so much hate, I suppose. And when he sees his children's ribs through their shirts while his neighbors line their bellies with meat stews and sugared tarts, it's hard for him to hate anyone but them. You think they'd share. They don't. — Pierce Brown

How did you get in here?" Sterling asked, wishing his words didn't sound quite so slurred. He was having more difficulty than usual bringing his shadowed world into focus. Damnation, why hadn't he lit more lamps or poured himself fewer snifters of brandy?
"Not important," Jack Dodger said. "What is important is for you to realize that you can do nothing to keep us out if we decide we want in. — Lorraine Heath

I am in no doubt that if you use the term 'luv' in a letter or text message then you are incapable of truly understanding the emotion. Artists have not pored over heartache and unrequited sentimentality for years so that our generation could decide that four letters is simply one too many to express how we feel. — Jon Richardson

Would it not be wiser, then, to remit this part of reading and to allow the critics, the gowned and furred authorities of the library, to decide the question of the book's absolute value for us? Yet how impossible! We may stress the value of sympathy; we may try to sink our identity as we read. But we know that we cannot sympathise wholly or immerse ourselves wholly; there is always a demon in us who whispers, "I hate, I love", and we cannot silence him. Indeed, it is precisely because we hate and we love that our relation with the poets and novelists is so intimate that we find the presence of another person intolerable. And even if the results are abhorrent and our judgments are wrong, still our taste, the nerve of sensation that sends shocks through us, is our chief illuminant; we learn through feeling; we cannot suppress our own idiosyncrasy without impoverishing it. — Virginia Woolf

Prejudices emerge from the disposition of the human mind to perceive and process information in categories. "Categories" is a nicer, more neutral word than "stereotypes," but it's the same thing. Cognitive psychologists consider stereotypes to be energy-saving devices that allow us to make efficient decisions on the basis of past experience; help us quickly process new information and retrieve memories; make sense of real differences between groups; and predict, often with considerable accuracy, how others will behave or how they think.24 We wisely rely on stereotypes and the quick information they give us to avoid danger, approach possible new friends, choose one school or job over another, or decide that that person across this crowded room will be the love of our lives. — Carol Tavris

Two ways to choose, which way to go
Decide for me, please let me know
Pictures all around, of how a good life should be
A model for the rest, that bred insecurity
Everything seemed easy but I didn't have the heart
Me in my own world, yeah you there beside
The gaps are enormous, we stare from each side — Ian Thomas Curtis

If someone is interested in working with me, I would much rather them email me and we sit down or get on the phone, than them look at a client list and decide if I'm worth it or not. It should be based on work, and based on how we get along. As opposed to like, "Oh, he's worked with this, this, and this. Let's go. That's fine." — Chris Black

There's a story in all of us. All we need to do is decide how to tell it" -Nicci Sefton — Nicci Sefton

when does an electron know when to jump, and how does it decide where to jump? Reasonably enough, Rutherford wanted to know what underlying process controlled the quantum jumping: "Bohr's answer was remarkable. Bohr suggested that the whole process was fundamentally random, and could only be considered by statistical methods: every change in the state of an atom should be regarded as an individual process, incapable of more detailed description. We are here so far removed from a causal description that an atom may in general even be said to possess a free choice between various possible transitions. — Andrew Thomas

And then we'll each have to decide - each of us for ourselves - how far we're willing to go to stop her. — Josephine Angelini

The course of our lives is determined by how we react
what we decide and what we do
at the darkest of times. The nature of that response determines a person's true worth and greatness. — Daisaku Ikeda

What could we do, then? We asked ourselves the question while crossing the dunes. Live? It's precisely in this kind of situation that, crushed by the sense of their own insignificance, people decide to have children; this is how the species reproduces, although less and less, it must be said. — Michel Houellebecq

If we don't think about our death until we die, how can we decide how we want to live? — Jennifer Ryan

So it is in our HEART, not in our sexualness, that we human beings think and decide how to live - even if the decision is to indulge in venery of whatever sort. A man sees the complementarity of woman and man not through the eyes of lust but in his heart. Jacob's lust for Rachel distracted him from perceiving the virtue of Leah, a virtue to complement or complete his. It's in his heart, not through the lust of his eyes, that a man sees or learns to see the complementation of woman and man. If a man is 'homosexual' or has little lust toward attractive women, this is no obstacle to his perceiving woman as his complement or helper. — Jonathan Mills

Normally, to decide whether we are alive we do not look outside of ourselves to find out if we are nourishing and generating life. We look into ourselves to find out how strong and healthy and vital we are. But the notion of the seed that dies demands an extraordinary redirection of the sense of life. Now to know if anyone is alive, we do not look at them; look beyond them to the mode of their expenditures and the life that they nourish and preserve beyond themselves. — Arthur C. McGill

We have a lifetime ahead of us to decide what we're going to do. I love you; heart and soul, and we're going to grow old together. We'll make things right and find our way, no matter how long it takes or where life takes us. — Ella Dominguez

Every morning we wake up with the same choice: What will my attitude be today? Ask yourself that without fail. Decide that no matter what the day brings, your attitude will include three elements: an awareness of how far you've come, gratitude for where you are, and determination to keep moving in the right direction. — Toni Sorenson

The stress of it all. How the hell are we expected at the age of sixteen (and seventeen, in your case) to decide what we want to do for the rest of our lives? Right now all I want to do is get out of school, not start planning to get into another one. You're lucky you've always known what you want to do. — Cecelia Ahern

I think the rules will change and I think more and more young women are going to decide that having a family and taking care of a home is not a bad choice, but how do we subsidize it - not necessarily European-style socialism. It'll have to be a new more creative, dynamic and local solution. — Christina Hoff Sommers

You don't get a chance to adjust and finagle, and decide that you really didn't intend to do that anyway, and readjust your objectives to make yourself look better. You never just focus on what you've accomplished for the year; you focus on what you've accomplished relative to exactly what you said you were going to accomplish - no matter how tough the measure. That was a discipline learned at Abbott, and that we carried into Amgen.3 — James C. Collins

What a queer gamble our existence is. We decide to do A instead of B and then the two roads diverge utterly and may lead in the end to heaven and to hell. Only later one sees how much and how awfully the fates differ. Yet what were the reasons for the choice? They may have been forgotten. Did one know what one was choosing? Certainly not. — Iris Murdoch

That is what it is. We can't change it. We just have to decide how we'll respond. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." In — Randy Pausch

What we must decide is how we are valuable rather than how valuable we are. — Edgar Friedenberg

I chose the songs for the music more than for the lyrical content and it wasn't until the end of the recording and when we were trying to decide running order that I realized how sad a lot of the songs could sound. — Vashti Bunyan

He stands alone in hollow gloom, with the sound of his own breath whispering down unseen passages ahead and behind and to both sides, wondering how he stumbled into this blackest of all labyrinths.
He entered by choice. We all do. Whether we are mapping the heavens or skulking the lanes of the underworld, whether we are hunting the imprisoned fiend or have ourselves become the monster, whether we are searching for what is lost or hiding what must never be found, we all round that first corner by choice - and by then, we are lost.
You too. You must decide what is false and what is true, and what is true for me but not for you. We are wandering the mazes, all of us, and we cannot hope to escape until we learn to tell between what is real and what is real for someone else. There lies the madness, and the truth as well. — Troy Denning

Sometimes we may find that our partner continues to seek satisfaction in ways that we cannot live with. Nevertheless, when we decide to go our own way, we still have a choice as to how we separate. We can separate with bad feelings, blaming the other's faults and unacceptable behaviour, or we can separate with forgiveness, love and understanding. — Peter Russell

Tell me what to wish for." Tell me what to ask the sea for."
"To be happy. Happiness."
"I don't think such a thing is had on Thisby. And if it is, I don't know how you would keep it."
"You whisper to it. What it needs to hear. Isn't that what you said?"
"That's what I said. What do I need to hear?"
"That tomorrow we'll rule the Scorpio Races as king and queen of Skarmouth and I'll save the house and you'll have your stallion. Dove will eat golden oats for the rest of her days and you will terrorize the races each year and people will come from every island in the world to find out how it is you get horses to listen to you. The piebald will carry Mutt Malvern into the sea and Gabriel will decide to stay on the island. I will have a farm and you will bring me bread for dinner."
"That's what I needed to hear. — Maggie Stiefvater

The Internet has crept up on us, and we need to know what it is and start looking at it. We have to decide which bits we want, which bits we don't, and how we're going to use them - and how we're going to put pressure on the people who deliver these goods to deliver what we really want. — Beeban Kidron

I dont think any kind of love is without some kind of hurt along the way. It's how we get to know each other better, how we decide what's for real ... what's the eternal stuff, what is going to push us closer together and seal the bond between us. — Rachel Higginson

How would we feel if you could pay extra to smoke on airplanes? When we decide something is a bad idea in general for society, we don't want the rich to be able to buy their way out of it. — Peter Gleick

There was a saying during the war: Those who decide late will always decide right. At Christmas in 1943 we could see that our front was moving backwards, but we had no real idea how bad it was. Anyway, no one could accuse Sindre of changing like a weather-vane. Unlike those at home who sat on their backsides during the war and suddenly rushed to join the Resistance in the last months. We used to call them the latter-day saints'. A few of them today swell the ranks of those who make public statements about the Norwegians' heroic efforts for the right side. — Jo Nesbo

We're going to investigate," Fireheart meowed. "We can't decide how to get rid of these dogs until we know exactly what we have to face. We're not going to attack them, not yet-have you got that, Cloudtail?"
Cloudtail's blue eyes burned into his, and he did not reply.
"I won't take you, Cloudtail, unless you promise to do as you're told without question."
"Oh, all right." The tip of Cloudtail's tail flicked irritably. "I want every last dog turned into crowfood, but I'll do it you're way, Fireheart."
"Good." Fireheart's gaze swept over the rest of the patrol. "Any questions?"
"What if we come across Tigerstar?" asked Sandstorm.
"A cat from another Clan on our territory?" Fireheart bared his teeth. "Yes, you can attack him.
Cloudtil let out a growl of satisfaction. — Erin Hunter

It's okay to feel bad about how things went down, but it's not okay to drown in guilt and regret every day for having made decisions other people don't agree with. At some point, we all have to man up and decide to do what we have to do, despite the people around us who try to get in the way. — M-E Girard

We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us - how we can take it, what we do with it - and that is what really counts in the end. — Joseph Fort Newton

We determine how much influence we'll have, when we decide how available we'll be. — Bob Goff

Human beings are better equipped to cope with disaster and hardship than they are with unvarying security, but as long as security is the highest value in a community they can have little opportunity to decide this for themselves. It is agreed that Englishmen coped magnificently with a war, and were more cheerful, enterprising and friendly under the daily threat of bombardment than they are now under benevolent peacetime, when we are so far from worrying about how many people starve in Africa that we can tolerate British policy in Nigeria. — Germaine Greer

It is up to us to decide what human means, and exactly how it is different from machine, and what tasks ought and ought not to be trusted to either species of symbol-processing system. But some decisions must be made soon, while the technology is still young. And the deciding must be shared by as many citizens as possible, not just the experts. In that sense, the most important factor in whether we will all see the dawn of a humane, sustainable world in the twenty-first century will be how we deal with these machines a few of us thought up and a lot of us will be using. — Howard Rheingold

Today, we are now deciding how do we treat those who are choosing to carry out a war against us, non-U.S. citizens who are choosing to take us to task for what we believe and who we are. In this conflict, we have to decide how we are going to try to find these terrorists. — Todd Tiahrt

How do you write a memory? For that matter, what is a memory? A remembrance, a dream of the past that floats into the present on occasion? What are memories? Are they illusion? For if memory is illusion, then how can we be sure of what is real? Illusions are fabricated, sometimes they are an accident, sometimes they are pure deception, and how do we tell the difference? Do you start with the person? Do you start with the idea? How can you begin with either if you can't decide on one? How can you write a memory if you don't even know what it is? How do you create something that has never before been created? If we don't know what our memories are, do we know what the present is? Do we know what the future holds? If we don't know what memories are then do we know what the past was? And if we question what we know, how can we be sure of anything? How can we be sure what's currently happening is real, and not a vivid memory being relived over and over in painful remembrance? — Stephen Vaughn

Mindfulness, by helping us notice our impulses before we act, gives us the opportunity to decide whether to act and how to act — Gil Fronsdal

First, the only certainty is that there is no certainty. Second, every decision as a consequence is a matter of weighing probabilities. Third, despite uncertainty we must decide and we must act. And lastly we need to judge decisions not only on the results, but how those decisions were made. — Robert Rubin

Remember that I'm Human. Before you judge me or decide how you'll deal with me, walk awhile in my shoes. If you do, I think you'll find with more understanding we can meet in the middle and walk the rest of the way together. — Eric Harvey

We all know how it says it's going to end, Dreamer, but no one knows for sure. That's up to you, and your friends. It is the Four who shall decide whether or not it comes true, not a bunch of words written on a piece of paper. Not even," he turned the book around so that its insides were facing her, "if it's written in on very old, very large, dusty paper. — Chani Lynn Feener

We say something every morning when we decide how to dress. — Alison Lurie

If we are not even free anymore to decide something as basic as what we wish to eat or drink, how much freedom do we really have left? — Ron Paul

The situation today is, we haven't got a good model to explain partial reflection by two surfaces; we just calculate the probability that a particular photomultiplier will be hit by a photon reflected from a sheet of glass. I have chosen this calculation as our first example of the method provided by theory of quantum electrodynamics. I am going to show you "how we count the beans"-what the physicists do to get the right answer. I am not going to explain how the photons actually "decide" whether to bounce back or go through; that is not known. (Probably the question has no meaning.) I will only show you how to calculate the correct probability that light will be reflected from glass of a given thickness, because that's the only thing physicists know how to do! What we do to get the answer to this problem is analogous to the things we have to do to get the answer to every other problem explained by quantum electrodynamics. — Richard Feynman

Most of us have been touched deeply by a few important people: people who, because of their feelings for us and their actions, have helped us to become who we are today. Some of what these special people gave to us was uplifting and inspiring. Sometimes what they gave to us caused pain and only made sense later. Who has been a very special person in your life? Who has shaped you and helped you to be who you are today? Write a letter to this person. Tell the person what he or she has done for you, the impact the person has had, and your feelings about how he or she has touched you. Be as honest and authentic as possible. Write from your heart. You may decide later to send this letter, but this first version should be for you. — Annie McKee

We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better. — Chuck Palahniuk

Pet, so far we've been playing at this. I'm going to take you a bit further. A play spanking can be erotic but I am going to take you flying, so high you'll never have felt anything like it." He paused and strolled around the kneeling boy. Damian pulled his hands together behind his back and linked the D rings on the cuffs. "Feel how helpless you are, on your knees to me, waiting for me to decide what to do to you? — Catt Ford

Edmund P. Clowney wrote, "The Bible does not present an art of prayer; it presents the God of prayer."129 We should not decide how to pray based on the experiences and feelings we want. Instead, we should do everything possible to behold our God as he is, and prayer will follow. The more clearly we grasp who God is, the more our prayer is shaped and determined accordingly. — Timothy Keller

There is good reason to make our decision now to serve the Lord. On this Sunday morning, when the complications and temptations of life are somewhat removed, and when we have the time and more of an inclination to take an eternal perspective, we can more clearly evaluate what will bring us the greatest happiness in life. We should decide now, in the light of the morning, how we will act when the darkness of night and when the storms of temptation arrive. — Howard W. Hunter

Everyone knows that a lot of memoirs have made-up scenes; it's obvious. And everyone knows that half the time at least fictions contain literal autobiographical truths. So how do we decide what's what, and does it even matter? — Lauren Slater

They may have salt, sugar, and fat on their side, but we, ultimately, have the power to make choices. After all, we decide what to buy. We decide how much to eat. — Michael Moss

According to Becker's logic, if we're short on cash and happen to drive by a convenience store, we quickly estimate how much money is in the register, consider the likelihood that we might get caught, and imagine what punishment might be in store for us if we are caught (obviously deducting possible time off for good behavior). On the basis of this cost-benefit calculation, we then decide whether it is worth it to rob the place or not. The essence of Becker's theory is that decisions about honesty, like most other decisions, are based on a cost-benefit analysis. — Dan Ariely

We need stories in order to understand ourselves, for good or bad, to be inspired or horrified, it's how we cope with being human and how we decide what type of person we will become. — Lily Graham

I do what most women do. I meet someone and some of it's right, maybe he looks right, or has the right job, or the right background, and, instead of sitting back and waiting for him to reveal his other bits, I make them up. I decide how he thinks, how he's going to treat me, and, sure enough, every time I conclude that this time he's definitely my perfect man, and all of a sudden, well, not so suddenly perhaps, usually around six months after we've split up, I see that he wasn't the person I thought he was at all. — Jane Green

Many companies operate from more of a command-and-control environment - they decide what's going to happen at headquarters and have the organization execute. That doesn't work here because it's the community of users who really have control.

So we enable, not direct. We think of our customers as people, not wallets. And that has implications for how we run the company. We partner with our customers and let them take the company where they think it's best utilized. — Meg Whitman

You're not going to believe me," Aelin went on. "What I've just said, you're not going to believe me. I know it--and that's fine. I don't expect you to. When you're ready, I'll be here."

"You're the Queen of Terrasen. You can't be."

"Says who? We are the masters of our own fates--we decide how to go forward." She squeezed his hand. "You're my friend, Dorian. — Sarah J. Maas

If the general picture of an expanding universe and a Big Bang is correct, we must then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big Bang? What happened before that? Was there a tiny universe, devoid of all matter, and then the matter suddenly created from nothing? How does that happen? In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from. And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed? — Carl Sagan

We were very poor. But between the covers of books I could go anywhere, I could be anybody, I could do anything. I began to read about people of great accomplishment. As I read those stories, I began to see a connecting thread. I began to see that the person who had the most to do with you and what happened to you in life, is you. You make decisions. You decide how much energy you want to put behind that decision. — Ben Carson

Mindfulness allows us to watch our thoughts, see how one thought leads to the next, decide if we're heading down an unhealthy path, and, if so, let go and change directions. — Sharon Salzberg

At some point, we all have to decide how we are going to fail: by not going far enough, or by going too far. The only alternative for the most successful (maybe even the most fulfilled) people is the latter. — Harriet Rubin

We're not given forever. We're given just a finite amount of time on this earth. It's up to us to decide how we are going to spend that time, and who we are going to spend it with. — T.M. Frazier

I would like to help people have honest and constructive conversations about energy. We need to understand how much energy our modern lifestyles use, decide how much energy we would like to use in the future, and choose where we will get that energy from. — David J. C. MacKay

We decide based on how people look; we decide based on how people sound; we decide based on how people are dressed. We decide based on their passion. — Frank Luntz

Shall I tell you the difference between our Holy Father and ourselves? We see things from a single view-point. He sees things from several. We decide that the thing is as we see it. But He has seen it otherwise, and He presents it as a more or less complete coaction of its qualities. See this sapphire. Well, you see the face of it: underneath, if I take it off my finger, there are a number of facets to be seen and a number more which are hidden by the gold of the setting. Now my meaning is that our Holy Father has seen all the facets as well as the table of the sapphire, or the thing. Consequently He knows a great deal more about the sapphire, or the thing, than we do. You must have noted that in Him. You must have noted how that every now and then, when He deigns to explain, He makes mysteries appear most wonderfully lucid. — Frederick Rolfe

I would like to see ... an entirely different procedure which is that we vote on the budget and decide how much we are going to spend, first, the way any family does, and then fit our priorities into what we think we have to spend. Instead, what we do, is to do it incrementally, starting at the bottom, adding and adding and adding ... Until we get the support of all the authorities in this House to decide, first, what we think this country can afford and then decide where the amount is going to be allocated, we will never have common sense in this House. — Millicent Fenwick

All of us face hard choices in our lives. Some face more than their share. We have to decide how to balance the demands of work and family. Caring for a sick child or an aging parent. Figuring out how to pay for college. Finding a good job, and what to do if you lose it. Whether to get married - or stay married. How to give our kids the opportunities they dream about and deserve. Life is about making such choices. Our choices and how we handle them shape the people we become. For leaders and nations, they can mean the difference between war and peace, poverty and prosperity. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

Our lives are a novel being written. We are its author. Every action we encounter and every person we meet has a role and a place in our ultimate story. It is in our control to decide the level of how, who and what impacts us and how large a role we decide to assign each. — Mark W. Boyer

Imagine how terrifying it would be if we had to decide the beginnings of things for ourselves: as to what race we should belong, what sex, and all that, instead of placidly coming out of unconsciousness to find it all arranged! — Mabel Osgood Wright

Evil is real - and powerful. It has to be fought, not explained away, not fled. And God is against evil all the way. So each of us has to decide where WE stand, how we're going to live OUR lives. We can try to persuade ourselves that evil doesn't exist; live for ourselves and wink at evil. We can say that it isn't so bad after all, maybe even try to call it fun by clothing it in silks and velvets. We can compromise with it, keep quiet about it and say it's none of our business. Or we can work on God's side, listen for His orders on strategy against the evil, no matter how horrible it is, and know that He can transform it. — Catherine Marshall

Addicts, as a group, generally score far above average o intelligence tests.
Why?
You tell me.
I guess maybe we're smart enough to have figured out how shitty things are and we decide addiction is the only way to deal with it. — James Frey

Ms. Doman had this whole thing about how we have to tell stories about whatever happens to us, and then we can use those stories to decide whether out lives are happy or not, whether events have redeeming aspects or are totally hopeless, that it's really all about how we choose to shape and name things. — Rachel DeWoskin

Whether we're the largest, smallest, most or least significant thing in the universe makes for a marvelous late-night discussion. It's not relevant to how we live in the here and now. We need to look around, take measure of ourselves, and decide what we can do and how much of it we do to improve our lives and the lives of as many others as we can reach. — Nikki Stern

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way. — Ray Bradbury

Hours is an understatement. I honestly don't know how the director and editor decide each week what actually makes it on the air. There's of course director and cast commentary on each episode on the DVD. We had a blast recording that. — Joel McHale

Because women are such potent ingredients of men's imaginations, we see how much power men feel women have over them, and how women must be suppressed, defanged, or idealized in one way or another. How, with Eve, they are often thought to be the root of the evil in the world -which says more about the man or men who wrote that story than about Eve herself. Eve is curious and wants knowledge, not power over others. [...] Both onstage and offstage, women have two levels of understanding concerning how to behave -one, to behave the way men want them to behave and forget that what they want might be different; two, to find out how they really feel and decide whether or not they are going to act on it! — Tina Packer

Life is a journey for us all. We all face trials. We all have ups and downs. All of us are human. But we are also the masters of our fate. We are the ones who decide how we are going to react to life. — Elizabeth Smart

We can't control what other people do and how they decide to treat us, but we can control our response to them. Don't let other people's behavior control you. Don't let them steal your joy; remember that your anger won't change them, but prayer can. — Joyce Meyer

One of the things that has really hit home for me is that the world is how we decide it is going to be. Very few things just happen. They grow out of history, and they grow out of the present, and the more we can get a sense of how our actions lead into other actions in the future, hopefully we'll learn to make better decisions. — Deborah Ellis

We tend to think only in terms of what we think is plausible that we could pull off and decide that "that's what I want", instead of focusing on "what do I want?" and then figuring out how we could pull it off. — Michael Neill

It had been impossible to decide how they were going to do it, because the goblin rarely left Harry, Ron, and Hermione alone together for more than five minutes at a time: "He could give my mother lessons," growled Ron, as the goblin's long fingers kept appearing around the edges of doors. With Bill's warning in mind, Harry could not help suspecting that Griphook was on the watch for possible skullduggery. Hermione disapproved so heartily of the planned double-cross that Harry had given up attempting to pick her brains on how best to do it; Ron, on the rare occasion that they had been able to snatch a few Griphook-free moments, had come up with nothing better than "We'll just have to wing it, mate. — J.K. Rowling

A wise man once said that we can't make anyone feel or do anything. We can throw things into the wind, but it's up to each person to decide how they want to react, where they want to stand when things fall. — Jonathan Maberry

Didn't happen. Won't want this again." He sighed and wrenched himself back. "Yeah, we will," Galen said soberly. John swallowed, legitimately afraid. "I'm a recovering addict - " "And I'm not recovering," Galen said. Those luminous green eyes narrowed and glittered. "Not yet. But I want you. And you need someone. So you need to decide how this is or is not going to happen, because it's an issue. — Amy Lane

Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is - or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal nature to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live. — Jostein Gaarder

We'd walk home together in the foggy summer night and I'd tell her about sex; the good stuff, like how it could be warm and exciting
it took you away
and the not-so-good things, like how once you showed someone that part of yourself, you had to trust them one thousand percent and anything could happen. Someone you thought you knew could change and suddenly not want you, suddenly decide you made a better story than a girlfriend. Or how sometimes you might think you wanted to do it and then halfway through or afterward realize no, you just wanted the company, really; you wanted someone to choose you, and the sex part itself was like a trade-off, something you felt like you had to give to get the other part. I'd tell her that and help her decide. I'd be a friend. — Sara Zarr

To be honest, we donate to projects that we think are meaningful. How society views it or how we are viewed by history, well, we'll let them decide. How others view us is out of our control. — Ronnie Chan

You have the freedom and the ability to decide what to do with your life, and that includes learning how to welcome happiness again. It's a conscious choice we each have to make, to emerge from the embers of profound loss and hopelessness, to become the fire that warms us, lights our path, all of it. We can embody that warmth and light. — Becca Vry