The more alternatives, the more difficult the choice.

Abbe' D'Allanival

The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.

Ben Stein

Our choices add up; each one influences others, and cumulatively¹ a series of delightful² short-term choices can leave us much worse off in the long run.

Daniel Akst, We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess, 2011

A person has three choices in life. You can swim against the tide and get exhausted³, or you can tread water and let the tide sweep you away, or you can swim with the tide, and let it take you where it wants you to go.

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Northern Lights, 1993

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962)

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

George Eliot (1819 - 1880)

Destiny is a name often given in retrospect⁴ to choices that had dramatic consequences.

J. K. Rowling, J. K. Rowling Official Website

It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

J. K. Rowling, Harry⁵ Potter and The Chamber⁶ of Secrets, 1999

A pessimist⁷, confronted with two bad choices, chooses both.

Jewish Proverb

The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.

John Dewey (1859 - 1952)

An executive is a person who always decides; sometimes he decides correctly, but he always decides.

John H. Patterson

A weak man has doubts before a decision, a strong man has them afterwards.

Karl Kraus (1874 - 1936)

When I make up my mind to do a thing it stays made up.

L. M. Montgomery (1874 - 1942), Anne of Green Gables, 1908

When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision.

Lord Falkland (1610 - 1643)

Check your ego⁸ at the door and check your gut⁹ instead. Every right decision I have ever made has come from my gut. Every wrong decision I've made was the result of me not listening to the greater voice of myself

Oprah Winfrey (1954 - ), Stanford Commencement Adress, 2008

If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. That's the lesson. That lesson alone, will save you a lot of grief. Even doubt means don't.

Oprah Winfrey (1954 - ), Stanford Commencement Adress, 2008

When you don't know what to do, get still. Get very still until you do know what to do.

Oprah Winfrey (1954 - ), Stanford Commencement Adress, 2008

When yu' can't have why you choose, yu' just choose what you have.

Owen Wister, The Virginian, Chapter 13, 1929

Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains¹⁰.

Paolo Giordano, The Solitude¹¹ of Prime Numbers: A Novel

Give no decision till both sides thou'st heard.

Phocylides

We must give lengthy¹² deliberation to what has to be decided¹³ once and for all.

Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.

Robert Fritz

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011), Stanford Commencement Adress, 2005