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The choice that you face is that you either continue to be able to make a contribution to the struggle or not. Joe Slovo
The ideological system is bounded by the consensus of the privileged. Elections are largely a ritual form. In congressional elections virtually all incumbents are returned to office, a reflection of the vacuity of the political system and the choices it offers. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy p59
And with popular organizations weakened or eliminated, isolated individuals are unable to participate in the political system in a meaningful way. It will, over time, become largely a symbolic pageant or, at most, a device whereby the public can select among competing elite groups and ratify their decisions, playing the role assigned to them by progressive democratic theorists of the Walter Lippmann variety. ibid.
Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. William Jennings Bryan
We are our choices. Jean-Paul Sartre
I’m beginning to think the only choice anyone has in life is between either a bad choice or a worse one. Sherrilyn Kenyon, Infamous
A woman can hardly ever choose … she is dependent on what happens to her. She must take meaner things, because only meaner things are within her reach. George Eliot, Felix Holt
All my choices were wrong. The Sopranos s5e13: All Due Respect starring James Gandolfini & Lorriane Bracco & Edie Falco & Michael Imperioli & Dominic Chianese & Steven van Zandt & Tony Sirico & Robert Iler et al
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compacts disc-players and electrical tin-openers. Choose god health. Low cholesterol. And dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments ... Choose life. But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin. Trainspotting 1996 starring Ewan McGregor & Ewen Bremner & Robert Carlyle & Kevin McKidd & Kelly MacDonald & Peter Mullan & Keith Allen & James Cosmo et al, director Danny Boyle
The truth is that I’m a bad person. But that’s going to change. I’m going to change. This is the last of that sort of thing. I’m cleaning up and moving on, going straight and choosing Life. I’m looking forward to it already. I’m going to be just like you. ibid.
When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Choice. The boy has no real choice, has he? Self-interest. The fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was there to be seen. He ceases to be a wrong-doer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice. A Clockwork Orange 1971 starring Malcolm McDowell & Patrick Magee & Michael Bates & Warren Clarke & John Clive & Adrienne Corri & Carl Duering & Paul Farrell & Clive Francis & Michael Gover et al, director Stanley Kubrick, Padre to Minister et al
We are in fact the sum total of our choices. Crimes and Misdemeanors 1989 starring Woody Allen & Martin Landau & Anjelica Huston & Mia Farrow & Alan Alda & Jerry Orbach & Joanna Gleason & Claire Bloom & Sam Waterston & Caroline Aaron et al, director Woody Allen, professor
All I have are the choices I make, and I choose her, come what may. The Adjustment Bureau 2011 starring Matt Damon & Emily Blunt & Terence Stamp & John Slattery & Anthony Mackie & Michael Kelly & Donnie Keshawarz & Anthony Ruivivar et al, director George Nolfi, David
I can go through this door alone. You’ll never see me or the people chasing us again, or you can come with me, and I don’t know what’s on the other side, but you’d be next to me and that’s all I’ve wanted since the minute I met you. ibid. David to Elise
It is the ruling of the court that Lieutenant Commander Data has the freedom to choose. Star Trek: The Next Generation s2e9: The Measure of a Man
One of the prices of giving people freedom of choice is that sometimes they make the wrong choice. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s3e24: Shakaar, Odo to Kira
Where people are denied the right of choice, recourse to such struggle is the only means of achieving their liberties. John F Kennedy, February 1961
I gestured at my litre of fizzy red wine. ‘Want a drop of this?’ I asked him.
‘No thanks. I try not to drink at lunchtime.’
‘So do I. But I never quite make it.’
‘I feel like shit all day if I drink at lunchtime.’
‘Me too. But I feel like shit all lunchtime if I don’t.’
‘Yes, well it all comes down to choices, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s the same in the evenings. Do you want to feel good at night or do you want to feel good in the morning? It’s the same with life. Do you want to feel good young or do you want to feel good old? One or the other, not both.’
‘Isn’t it a tragedy?’ Martin Amis, Money
I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, far more revolutionary than socialist ideas or anybody else’s idea, but if you have power, you use it to meet the needs of you and your community. And this idea of choice which capital talks about all time – you’ve got to have a choice. Choice depends on the freedom to choose. And if you’re shackled with debt you don’t have a freedom to choose ... I think that if poor here in Britain or in the United States turned out and voted for people who really represented their interests, there would be a real democratic revolution. Tony Benn MP, interview Michael Moore, Sicko 2007
What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world. Albert Einstein
The most insidious doctrine of our age is that we have no choices. Will Hutton, The State to Come
What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1821-81, Notes from Underground, 1864
There’s small choice in rotten apples. William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew I i 132, Hortensio
Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. John 15:16
Was there ever in anyone's lifespan a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before? John Didion, Run River 1963
An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr Collins, and I will never see you again if you do. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do. Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
Man has a choice and it’s a choice that makes him a man. John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Either three years’ famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the Lord, even the pestilence, in the land, and the angel of the Lord destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel. Now therefore advise thyself what word I shall bring again to him that sent me. I Chronicles 21:12
We kid ourselves on we’ve got free will. But we’ve only got the free will to do what our upbringing tells us to do. Take me: I’m a flawed character; the flaw being I haven’t got any character. Rab C Nesbitt: New, BBC 1998
They remained silent; afraid to trust their own intelligence, and the reason of this attitude was that they had to choose between the evidence of their own intelligence, and the stories told them by their masters and exploiters. And when it came to making this choice they deemed it safer to follow their old guides, than to rely on their own judgement, because from their very infancy and they had drilled into them the doctrine of their own mental and social inferiority. Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist