We Are Free To Choose Quotes & Sayings

Life is a great university for the unfolding of the mind, for developing character. In choosing our life work, when we are free to choose, we should remember this, and choose that which will call the biggest man or woman out of us and not that from which we can coin the most dollars. — Orison Swett Marden

When we work so hard at our preparations for Christmas, we often feel cheated and frustrated when others fail to notice the results of our efforts. We need to ask ourselves why we are doing the things we choose to do. If love motivates us-love for our families, for our neighbors - then we are free to simply enjoy the actual process of what we do, rather than requiring the approval and admiration of others for the results of our labors. — Ellyn Sanna

We are free to choose our actions, based on our knowledge of correct principles, but we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions. Remember, If you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other. — Stephen R. Covey

We are free to choose our actions, ... but we are not free to choose the consequences of these actions. — Stephen R. Covey

So you see, we are not free to choose our fate. There is a yoke to be borne and freedom is only an illusion. I am not free. God has put me here on earth for a reason. — Naomi Ragen

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace. — George W. Bush

Because of the conflicts and challenges we face in today's world, I wish to suggest a single choice - a choice of peace and protection and a choice that is appropriate for all. That choice is faith. Be aware that faith is not a free gift given without thought, desire, or effort. It does not come as the dew falls from heaven. The Savior said, "Come unto me" (Matthew 11:28) and "Knock, and it shall be [given] you" (Matthew 7:7). These are action verbs - come, knock. They are choices. So I say, choose faith. — Richard C. Edgley

When we become response-able - that is, when we learn to choose our responses freely and consciously - we are free to build a life of continuing growth and increasing happiness. — Sue Patton Thoele

May there not be some subconscious jealousy that motivates our reactions to other people? Why do we eat chocolate sundaes when we know that we should reduce? Are we free from the influence of parental training? The Scriptures say, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Parental training and all education proceed on the assumption that the will is not free, but can be trained, motivated, and directed. Finally, beyond both physiology and psychology there is God. Can we be sure that he is not directing our choices? Do we know that we are free from his grace? The Psalm says, "Blessed is the man whom you choose and cause to approach you." Is it certain that God has not caused us to choose to approach him? Can we set a limit to God's power? Can we tell how far it extends and just where it ends? Are we outside his control? — Gordon H. Clark

We are all free spirits. We must choose to practice freedom. — SARK

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

This is the kind we like best. They have a certain gaiety to them, a power of invention, they don't care what people think. They have escaped, though what it is they've escaped from isn't clear to us. We think that their bizarre costumes, their verbal ties, are chosen, and that when the time comes we also will be free to choose. — Margaret Atwood

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

It was a huge misconception that my father created all the chaos and evil on Earth. Mortals were given free will by my Uncle God, and they created evil all by their lonesome. My dad got to punish the you know what out of those idiots who choose to be heinously bad. And quite honestly some of them deserved my dad's wrath. He loved his job. Another misconception is that Hell is below and Heaven is above. What does that even mean? Nothing is up or down, that's just human mythology. Most likely the mistake was made because Hell was occasionally called the Underworld. Hell and Heaven are simply on different planes, accessible through portals. Earth was modeled after a combination of the seasons, climates and terrains of Heaven and Hell. We all shared the same moon and sun and stars. — Robyn Peterman

Who knows? Maybe they're right. Maybe we are driven crazy by our feelings. Maybe love is a disease, and we would be better off without it.
But we have chosen a different road. And in the end that is the point of escaping the cure: We are free to choose.
We are even free to choose the wrong thing. — Lauren Oliver

Because of the past, so many people are living in the past! No one is free from the past, but we are free to choose to move from the past into the present or stay in the past, though we live in the present! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The only answer to this, and it isn't an entire answer, said Father Travis, is that God made human beings free agents. We are able to choose good over evil, but the opposite too. And in order to protect our human freedom, God doesn't often, very often at least, intervene. God can't do that without taking away our moral freedom. Do you see?
No. But yeah.
The only thing that God can do, and does all of the time, is to draw good from any evil situation. — Louise Erdrich

And we have the tools. We have the tools to choose. They are free, and within you now! It is the tool of conscious thought. Imagine your life and how it could be better if you used the power of conscious thought effectively? — Tony Curl

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 we have to wait to see how we feel before we know if we can enjoy the day, then we are giving feelings control over us. But thankfully we have free will and can make decisions that are not based on feelings. If we are willing to make right choices regardless of how we feel, God will always be faithful to give us the strength to do so. Living the good life that God has made ready for us is based on our being obedient to His way of being and doing. He gives us the strength to do what is right, but we are the ones who must choose it ... God won't do it for us. — Joyce Meyer

Our life crises tell us that we need to break free of beliefs that no longer serve our personal development.
These points at which we must choose to change or to stagnate are our greatest challenges.
Every new crossroads means we enter into a new cycle of change - whether it be adopting a new health regimen or a new spiritual practice.
And change inevitably means letting go of familiar people and places and moving on to another stage of life. — Caroline Myss

Never forget that we are more than the genetic code. We can be more than labels applied to us. We can be more than what others whisper behind our backs. Free will exists. We need to choose to be the best we can be and we need to help others do the same. Believe in yourself. — Sophie Jordan

While we are each free to believe whatever we choose, we cannot do whatever we choose. — Hillary Clinton

We are all blinded by deceit of what society or family tells us is right. Some of us choose to break free. — Tami Egonu

MANIFESTO OF THE BRAVE AND BROKENHEARTED There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers Than those of us who are willing to fall Because we have learned how to rise With skinned knees and bruised hearts; We choose owning our stories of struggle, Over hiding, over hustling, over pretending. When we deny our stories, they define us. When we run from struggle, we are never free. So we turn toward truth and look it in the eye. We will not be characters in our stories. Not villains, not victims, not even heroes. We are the authors of our lives. We write our own daring endings. We craft love from heartbreak, Compassion from shame, Grace from disappointment, Courage from failure. Showing up is our power. Story is our way home. Truth is our song. We are the brave and brokenhearted. We are rising strong. — Brene Brown

Sir, there is no Christian nation, thus free to choose as we are, which would establish slavery. — William H. Seward

In this remarkably fast-developing world of science and technology, never forget that we are more than genetic code. We can be more than the labels applied to us. We can be more than what others whisper behind our backs or shout in our faces. Free will exists. We need to choose to be the best we can be, and we need to help others do the same. — Sophie Jordan

So, as I wrote in the paperback edition of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, I started telling anyone who asked "Is God in cyberspace?" that the answer is "no" - but He wants to be there. But only we can bring Him there by how we act there. God celebrates a universe with such human freedom because He knows that the only way He is truly manifest in the world is not if He intervenes but if we all choose sanctity and morality in an environment where we are free to choose anything. As Rabbi Marx put it, "In the postbiblical Jewish view of the world, you cannot be moral unless you are totally free. If you are not free, you are really not empowered, and if you are not empowered the choices that you make are not entirely your own. What God says about cyberspace is that you are really free there, and I hope you make the right choices, because if you do I will be present." The — Thomas L. Friedman

If we are as free as we like to believe, then it makes sense that we are free to choose who we want to be. And then we set out into the world to acquire the knowledge, the wisdom, and the experience we need in order to become the painters, the dancers, the actors, the writers we have always dreamed of being.
We need a reason for everything we do in life.
Artists are guided by passion, by the need to create. And our emotions and dreams are amplified by our art. Whether a conscious decision or not, in order to be an artist, one has to create art. — Cristian Mihai

Though freedom and wealth are both good things which most of us desire and though we often need both to obtain what we wish, they still remain different. Whether or not I am my own master and can follow my own choice and whether the possibilities from which I must choose are many or few are two entirely different questions. The courtier living in the lap of luxury but at the beck and call of his prince may be much less free than a poor peasant or artisan, less able to live his own life and to choose his own opportunities for usefulness. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

It is inconceivable that the God who gives Himself in His Son to save us, should have created some people ordained to evil and damnation. There can only be one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved. Our free choice is ruled out in this regard. God wants free people, except in relation to this last and definitive decision. We are not free to decide and choose to be damned. — Jacques Ellul

Only the weak blame their past for the faults they find in their present; the strong acknowledge the effects of their past and then move on from it. We are all free to choose whether we will be weak or strong. — Penny Jordan

We will have to choose not between color nor race nor religion nor between East and West either, but simply between being slaves and being free. And we will have to choose completely and for good; the time is already past now when we can choose a little of each, a little of both. We can choose a state of slavedom, and if we are powerful enough to be among the top two or three or ten, we can have a certain amount of license - until someone more powerful rises and has us machine-gunned against a cellar wall. — William Faulkner

We are free, in the West, to choose; we have real choice to pursue our own desires; we are free to set the goals and contents of our own lives; the West is made up of individuals who are free to decide what meaning to give to their lives-in short the glory of the West is that life is an open book,[1] while under Islam, life is a closed book, everything has been decided for you: God and the Holy Law set limits on the possible agenda of your life. — Ibn Warraq

This objective of getting what we want from other people-or getting them to do what we want them to do-threatens the autonomy of people, their right to choose what they want to do. And whenever people feel that they're not free to choose what they want to do, they are likely to resist, even if they see the purpose in what we are asking and would ordinarily want to do it. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

We are built to desire free will and to choose our own destiny. It's not about being right or wrong; it's about the celebration of life, your free will. The human spirit must constantly be fed. It is what makes us survive. — DeiAmor Verus

Everything is a matter of choice, and when we choose are we not gambling on the unknown and its being a wise choice?And isn't it free choice that makes individuals of us? We are eternally free to choose ourselves and our futures. I believe myself that life is quite comparable to a map like this a constant choice of direction and route. — Dorothy Gilman

Many couples, many people, are not living with real human beings, but with their ghosts. Who has not followed for years the spell of a particular tone of voice, from voice to voice, as the fetishist follows a beautiful foot, scarcely seeing the woman herself? A voice, a mouth, an eye, all stemming from the original fountain of our first desire, directing it, enslaving us, until we choose to unravel the fatal web and free ourselves. — Anais Nin

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. — Barack Obama

Agency, or the power to choose, was ours as spirit children of our Creator before the world was. It is a gift from God, nearly as precious as life itself. Often, however, agency is misunderstood. While we are free to choose, once we have made those choices, we are tied to the consequence of those choices. We are free to take drugs or not. But once we choose to use a habit-forming drug, we are bound to the consequences of that choice. Addiction surrenders later freedom to choose. — Russell M. Nelson

When you are in a jackal environment, never give them the power to submit or rebel. We want to teach this to children very early: Never lose track that you are always free to choose. Don't allow institutions to determine what you do. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Nobody is trial-free, but we have a choice. We can choose to allow our experiences to hold us back, and to not allow us to become great or achieve greatness in this life. Or we can allow our experiences to push us forward, to make us grateful for every day we have and to be all the more thankful for those who are around us.- Elizabeth Smart — Keary Taylor

Fate isn't one straight road ... there are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path. — Dean Koontz

What we call "Higher" behavior is elaborated by our abstract mind to ensure survival by an efficient cohesion of our clan.
What we call "lower" behavior is to ensure survival at the expense of a rival, or to prevent the survival of a rival to be at our expense.
So,
Be they our "higher" and "lower" behavior/selves, our humanity and inhumanity, our "Divine" and "diabolic" trends, or any aspect of our Human Nature,
All are created by our abstract mind to ensure survival in an environment of scarcity.

But of course you can always choose to adopt "revelations" which present human nature as:
A messed up image of a messed up supernatural coexistence between two messed up opposite supernatural entities with a messed up relation.

Ultimately, we all think we choose by what we think we know. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

When our thoughts, at times, wander into darkness ... remember we are human and have been imbued with free will to choose the light. — Christopher Earle

Preachers and counselors can spend their energy exhorting people to change their behavior. But the human will is not a free entity. It is bound to a person's understanding. People will do what they believe. Rather than making a concerted effort to influence choices, preachers first need to be influencing minds. When a person understands who Christ is, on what basis he is worthwhile, and what life is all about, he has the formulation necessary for any sustained change in lifestyle. Christians who try to "live right" without correcting a wrong understanding about how to meet personal needs will always labor and struggle with Christianity, grinding out their responsible duty in a joyless, strained fashion. Christ taught that when we know the truth, we can be set free. We now are free to choose the life of obedience because we understand that in Christ we now are worthwhile persons. We are free to express our gratitude in the worship and service of the One who has met our needs. — Larry Crabb

It must be remembered that we are free to acknowledge and surrender our feelings, and we are free not to surrender. As we examine our "I can'ts" and find out that they are really "I won'ts," it doesn't mean that we have to let go of the negative feelings that result in the "I won'ts." We are perfectly free to refuse to let go. We are free to hang on to negativity as long as we want. There is no law that says we have to give it up. We are free agents. But it makes a big difference in our self-concept to realize that "I won't do something" is quite a different feeling than to think that "I'm a victim and I can't." For instance, we can choose to hate somebody if we want. We can choose to blame them. We can choose to blame circumstances. But being more conscious and realizing that we are freely choosing this attitude puts us in a higher state of consciousness and, therefore, closer to greater power and mastery than being the helpless victim of a feeling. — David R. Hawkins

We can see the mind as a lotus. Some lotuses are still stuck in the mud, some have climbed above the mud but are still underwater, some have reached the surface, while others are open in the sun, stain-free. Which lotus do you choose to be? If you find yourself below the surface, watch out for the bites of fishes and turtles. — Ajahn Chah

We are free to choose our paths, but we can't choose the consequences that come with them. — Sean Covey

I've been in situations where forgiveness has been withheld from me. And I've come to understand it's their choice. But just because they choose to live in a prison of unforgiveness doesn't mean I have to sit in there with them. Another perspective comes from R.T. Kendall in his book, Total Forgiveness, "Forgiving yourself may bring about the breakthrough you have been looking for. It could set you free in ways you have never experienced before." The things we've been through, even if they are shameful or destructive, could very well be things God wants to use in our lives to help others. And if we're standing in the way of our forgiveness, healing, and freedom, how can God do His work in our lives? — Tracie Stier-Johnson

Well, I think that's been my career. I always choose stuff that's the same, yet different. These projects just happened. I didn't plan it out that way. I just happened to be free, and the director, Dan Pritzker, decided to do his film again. I say again because we did it seven years ago. A lot of the actors were not available, so he just couldn't wait anymore and he recast everything. Me and two other characters are the only people involved with the new one, who were involved with the previous one. — Michael Rooker

Some people are more talented than others. Some are more educationally privileged than others. But we all have the capacity to be great. Greatness comes with recognizing that your potential is limited only by how you choose, how you use your freedom, how resolute you are, in short, by your attitude. And we are all free to choose our attitude. — Peter Koestenbaum

With every sunrise, we get to choose ... who we are, what we believe, and how we will live the life the gods have given us. We can't always choose our circumstances. No. The Fates do that. But we can always choose who we will be and how we will be within them. — Nicole Y. Walters

What one great idea resonates deeper in the soul than any other ... that we are free to choose. Next to life itself, the power to choose is your greatest gift. — Stephen Covey

But these gains in freedom for both men and women often seem like a triumph of subtraction rather than addition. Over time, writes Coontz, Americans have come to define liberty "negatively, as lack of dependence, the right not to be obligated to others. Independence came to mean immunity from social claims on one's wealth or time." If this is how you conceive of liberty - as freedom from obligation - then the transition to parenthood is a dizzying shock. Most Americans are free to choose or change spouses, and the middle class has at least a modicum of freedom to choose or change careers. But we can never choose or change our children. They are the last binding obligation in a culture that asks for almost no other permanent commitments at all. — Jennifer Senior

Our conviction that we are free to choose what we make of a photograph hides the complicity to which we are recruited in the very act of looking. — Victor Burgin

Our fate is matched by the total freedom we have to react to our fate. It is as if we were dealt a hand of card. Once we have them, we are free to play them as we choose. — Thomas Sowell

The modern West has been deeply split about freedom and responsibility. On the one hand, it has championed human freedom in many forms - human rights, sexual freedom, political liberty, freedom to choose in many spheres. On the other hand, many of its most intelligent members have not believed that people are free at all, and have devoted great efforts to show that really we are the product of our genes, our unconscious drives, our education, economic pressures, or other forms of conditioning. — David F. Ford

We are what we are because our will is free: We are free to choose. — Cassandra Clare

While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions. — Stephen R. Covey

choose not to buy into a negative belief system. How does this work in everyday life? Let's take a common example. The newspapers report unemployment is at a record high. The television news commentator states: "No jobs are available." At this point, we are free to refuse to buy into the negative thought form. We can say instead, "Unemployment does not apply to me." By refusing to accept the negative belief, it now has no hold over our own life. — David R. Hawkins

The scriptures remind us, 'And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' (John 8:32.) Our job is to search for the full truth and apply it in our lives. Though we are free to act, we are not free to decide what is right or wrong. That was determined eons ago. We can scoff at sacred things, rationalize our behavior, spout our own ideas, agree or disagree, but it doesn't change anything. We cannot alter God's laws, his truth. We can choose to use truth wisely and reach our goal, or we can refuse to learn truth, to live it, and then pay the inevitable penalty. — Elaine Cannon

Christian consciousness experiences itself in a curious sense as LIBERATED TO FAIL, without intolerable damage to self-esteem and without any reduction of moral seriousness. We are free to be inadequate, free to foul things up, and yet affirm ourselves in a more basic sense than the secular moralist or humanistic idealist (who can affirm themselves only on the basis of merits and accomplishments. We are free to choose and deny finite values, free to take constructive guilt upon us and to see it as an inevitable and providentially given aspect of our fallen human condition.
All that we have said leads us to the pinnacle of this good news: In Jesus Christ we need no longer be guilty before God. It is only before our clay-footed gods that we stand guilty! — Thomas C. Oden

I suppose we're built with complete free will, and as much as we're capable of depravity, to the same degree we are wired for greatness. Everyone gets to choose, I think. And my challenge is to decide where I'll place the bulk of my attention. What I'll most believe in. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

We are not free to pick and choose the parts of the Bible we want to believe or obey. God has given us all of it, and we should be obedient to all of it. — Billy Graham

We want our children to become who they are- and a developed person is, above all, free. But freedom as we define it doesn't mean doing what you want. Freedom means the ability to make choices that are good for you. It is the power to choose to become what you are capable of becoming, to develop your unique potential by making choices that turn possibility into reality. It is the ability to make choices that actualize you. As often as not, maybe more often than not, this kind of freedom means doing what you do not want, doing what is uncomfortable or tiring or boring or annoying — Gregory Millman

As I see it, a person's culture represents his appraisal of the things that make up his life. And a fellow becomes cultured, I believe, by selecting that which is fine and beautiful in life and throwing aside that which is mediocre or phony. Sort of a series of free, very personal choices, you might say. If this is true, then I think it follows that 'freedom' is the most precious word to culture. Freedom to believe what you choose and read, think and say and be with what you choose. In America, we are guaranteed these freedoms. It is the constitutional privilege of every American to become cultured or to grow up like Donald Duck. I believe that this spiritual and intellectual freedom, which we Americans enjoy, is our greatest cultural blessing. Therefore, it seems to me, that the first duty of culture is to defend freedom and resist all tyranny. — Walt Disney Company

While we are free to choose, once we have made those choices, we are tied to the consequences of those choices. — Russell M. Nelson

Most of the food crops raised in the world today are fed to livestock destined for slaughter for us to eat, and most of the water used is used to raise the food crops that are fed to those animals. It has been estimated that, because of the extraordinary amount of grain it takes to raise food animals, if we reduced the amount of meat we eat by only ten percent, that would free up enough grain to feed all the starving humans in the world. So when we choose to eat meat instead of vegetables, we are choosing to take food away from others who are hungry. — Sharon Gannon

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

His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power.
If you choose to say, 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,' you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prifex to them the two other words, 'God can.'
It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God. — C.S. Lewis

Unless we choose to decentralize and to use applied science, not as the end to which human beings are to be made the means, but as the means to producing a race of free individuals, we have only two alternatives to choose from: either a number of national — Aldous Huxley

Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with the liberty to choose. — John Rawls

We live in a democracy, and people are free to sometimes choose the wrong leader. — Rand Paul

Our right brain hemisphere (transcendent mind) supports us in acknowledging our infinite potential when we understand our true nature and origins, and the importance of our free will. The latter gives us the ability to choose to live like an interdependent whole, within which, we are as musical notes inside a great symphony or the various shades of color in a painting, where our role is as important as that of every component but not better than any other — Ivan Figueroa-Otero

When you have done the spiritual growing up you realize that every human being is of equal importance, has work to do in this world, and has equal potential. We are in many varied stages of growth; this is true because we have free will. You have free will as to whether you will finish the mental and emotional growing up. Many choose not to. — Peace Pilgrim

What about free will? . . . There's that too. I never understood why people think they're mutually exclusive. Ask me, our entire lives aren't planned out for us- just some things. Specific events along the way, crossroads we're meant to come to. Tests, maybe, to measure our progress. But we always have choices, and those choices can send us along an unplanned path . . . there are some things that are meant to happen at a certain moment and in a certain way. No matter which path you choose, which decisions you make along your own particular journey, those pivotal moments appear to be set in stone. Maybe they represent the specific lessons we're meant to learn . . . Things we have to face. Things we have to learn. Responsibilities we have to fulfill. And mistakes we have to correct. — Kay Hooper

We are free to choose. — Lauren Oliver

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

We are a people united by our love for freedom, even when we differ in our personal beliefs. In America, we are free to profess any faith we choose, or no faith at all. — George W. Bush

In the West we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live as we choose. Liberty is codified in human rights, a magnificent Western creation but also, I believe, a universal good. — Ibn Warraq

Our hopes of avoiding the fate which threatens must ... [be to make]adjustments that will be needed if we are to recover and surpass our former standards ... and only if every one of us is ready to individually obey the necessities of readjustment shall we be able to get through a difficult period as free men who can choose their own way of life. Let a uniform minimum be secured to everybody by all means; but let us admit at the same time that with this assurance of a basic minimum all claims for a privileged security for particular classes must lapse ... — Friedrich Hayek

And I promise myself then, in that moment, that I will hold him forever, just like this, until all the pain and torture and suffering is gone, until he's given a chance to live the kind of life where no one can wound him this deeply ever again.
And we are quotation marks, inverted and upside down, clinging to one another at the end of this life sentence. Trapped by lives we did not choose.
It's time, I think, to break free. — Tahereh Mafi

Yes, sometimes things happen that are clearly Divine intervention, but other times we reap the consequences of our or another's sinful choices. From Adam and Eve on down, God has never interfered with man's free will to choose what is evil versus what is good. And we all pay the consequences of that. It's not about whether bad and unjust things happen, but how we choose to react when they do. — Debbie Kaufman

We are free to choose our response in any situation, but in doing so we chose the attendant consequence. If we pick up one end of the stick, we pick up the other. — Stephen Covey

Somewhere along the line we started misinterpreting the First Amendment and this idea of the freedom of speech the amendment grants us. We are free to speak as we choose without fear of prosecution or persecution, but we are not free to speak as we choose without consequence. — Roxane Gay

The Seductive Lure of Socialism Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation. This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat again: These two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free. — Frederic Bastiat

Maybe none of us can choose who we love, Cas. None of the lucky ones, anyway. The only choice we have is how we serve that love. And Ethan's made his choice. What about you? Are you going to reject it, or make the best of what you've been given? — Vicki Keire

Differentiation separates, but it also gives us the chance for reunification. Separation gives us the chance to truly value the experience of oneness, in much the same way that both light and shadow are needed to create the perception of form. If we had simply kept oneness from the beginning of time, there would have been no chance to choose oneness through our own free will, which is the choice we have to make right now. — Ilchi Lee

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness? — Milan Kundera

God's interventions are miracles: events that cannot happen by merely natural agents but only by a supernatural agent. They no more interfere with our free will than natural events like earthquakes. We choose how to respond to them. — Peter Kreeft

the subject of free will another debated topic
do we or don't we have the ability to pick?
greatly controlled by mind at lower levels of consciousness
almost non-existent, one's free will is notably less
at this level one's actions are purely reactionary
lacking self-awareness, animal instincts are primary
not going along with the mind, free will increases
then higher up, it's surrendered until it ceases
thus, there both is and is not the capacity to choose
even when we do it's limited by one's views
choosing alternatively, with a mind conditioned and bound
free will, then, is at best constrained and drowned — Jarett Sabirsh

I believe in the dignity of every person. I believe that while we are all free to practice our religion, and to hold whatever religious beliefs we choose. — Martin O'Malley

We are free to choose the wrong thing. — Lauren Oliver

[Our] problems boil down to one of moral choices.
God wanted a world based on moral values,
thus He created mankind with the ability to respond to moral choices.
Faced with the moral option of living selfishly or unselfishly, people can and do make wrong decisions. We are free to choose, but we reap the consequences of bad moral decisions. — Billy Graham

They have a certain gaiety to them, a power of invention, they don't care what people think. They have escaped, though what it is they've escaped from isn't clear to us. We think that their bizarre costumes, their verbal tics, are chosen, and that when the time comes we also will be free to choose. That's what I'm going to be like, — Margaret Atwood

Our greatest human freedom is that, despite whatever our physical situation is in life, WE ARE ALWAYS FREE TO CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS! — Viktor E. Frankl

I don't consider myself as a bad person, on the whole I consider myself a good person, I'm good to my parents. I treat my girl right ,,, take her out and buy her stuff. And I go to church every Sunday, But I've decided that just once I wanna do a really bad thing. I mean a really seriously bad thing. 'cause, ya know, like, we're put on this earth with free will. We can choose to do this or that. We can choose to be good or bad. But sometimes I think most people are good and not bad only because they're scared they might go to jail or hell or someplace. Some guy once said: "Anything done out of fear has no moral value" Well, I think that's right. I figure the only way you can be truly good is if you've tried been good, and you've tried being good, and you've tried being bad, and being good feels better. — Alan Moore

So maybe the difference isn't language. Maybe it's this: animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do. We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do. The dragons are dangerous, yes. They can do harm, yes. But they're not evil. They're beneath our morality, if you will, like any animal. Or beyond it. They have nothing to do with it.
We must choose and choose again. The animals need only be and do. We're yoked, and they're free. So to be with an animal is to know a little freedom ... — Ursula K. Le Guin

Every restaurant is a theater, and the truly great ones allow us to indulge in the fantasy that we are rich and powerful. When restaurants hold up their end of the bargain, they give us the illusion of being surrounded by servants intent on ensuring our happiness and offering extraordinary food.
But even modest restaurants offer the opportunity to become someone else, at least for a little while. Restaurants free us from mundane reality; that is part of their charm. When you walk through the door, you are entering neutral territory where you are free to be whoever you choose for the duration of the meal. — Ruth Reichl