We Have No Choice Quotes

“I learned that it was in hard times that people usually changed the course of their life; in good times, they frequently only talked about change. Hard times forced them to overcome the doubts that normally gave them pause.It surprised me how often we hold ourselves back until we have no choice.”

— Po Bronson

“Perhaps the real point of life is simply to wear us down until we have no choice but to start abandoning our defenses. We learn that the way things are is simply the way they are meant to be right now, and then, suddenly, at long last, we catch a glimpse of the abundance in the moment
abundance even in the face of things falling apart.”

— Katrina Kenison

“Perhaps it's human nature: We want to shield our children from pain, and what we get instead is life and heartache and lessons that bring us to our knees. Sooner or later we are handed the brute, necessary curriculum of surrender, we have no choice, then but to bow our heads and learn. We struggle to accept that our children's destinies are not ours to write, their battles not ours to fight, their bruises not ours to bear, nor their victories ours to take credit for. We learn humility and how to ask for help. We learn to let go even when every fiber of our being yearns to hold on even tighter.”

— Katrina Kenison

“We must believe in free will. We have no choice.”

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

“For it is not we who call God by these names. We do not invent them. On the contrary, if it depended on us, we would be silent about him, try to forget him, and disown all his names. We take no delight in the knowledge of his ways. We tend continually to oppose his names: his independence, sovereignty, righteousness, and love, and resist him in all his perfections. But it is God himself who reveals all his perfections and puts his names on our lips. It is he who gives himself these names and who, despite our opposition, maintains them. It is of little use to us to deny his righteousness: every day he demonstrates this quality in history. And so it is with all his attributes. He brings them out despite us. The final goal of all his ways is that his name will shine out in all his works and be written on everyone's forehead (Rev. 22:4). For that reason we have no choice but to name him with the many names his revelation furnishes us.”

— Herman Bavinck

“What does it mean, this notion of ... reading? ... it returns us to a reckoning with time. In the midst of a book, we have no choice but to be patient, to take each thing in its moment, to let the narrative prevail. Even more, we are reminded of all we need to savor
this instant, this scene, this line. We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise, the tumult, to discover our reflections in another mind. As we do, we join a broader conversation, by which we both transcend ourselves and are enlarged.”

— David L. Ulin

“Getting stuck can be the best thing that could happen to us, because it forces us to stop. It halts the momentum of our lives. We have no choice but to notice what is around us, and we end up searching for Jesus.”

— Michael Yaconelli

“We're in the same position as any scientist. All we have to go on is experiential evidence. And sooner or later we have to trust our own experience, because that's all we really have. Otherwise it's a vicious circle. If I fundamentally distrust my experience, then I must distrust even my capacity to distrust, since that is also an experience. So sooner or later I have no choice but to trust, trust my experience, trust that the universe is not fundamentally and persistently going to lie to me. Of course we can be mistaken, and sometimes experiences are misleading, but on balance we have no choice but to follow them. It's a type of phenomenological imperative. And especially mystical experiences-if anything, as you say, they are more real, not less real, than other experiences. I”

— Ken Wilber

“Baby, we have no choice of what color we're born or who our parents are or whether we're rich or poor. What we do have is some choice over what we make of our lives once we're here.”

— Mildred D. Taylor

“We don't become geisha because we want our lives to be happy; we become geisha because we have no choice.”

— Arthur Golden

“Inside us all are pieces of that which makes the neagitve. Demons are neither good nor bad. Like you, they have many facets. It is that inner essence, or drive, if you will, that we all have that guides us through our lives. Sometimes those voices that drive us are whispered memories that live deep inside and cause us such pain that we have no choice except to let it out and to hurt those around us. But at other times, the voice is love and compassion, and it guides us to a gentler place. In the end, we, alone, must choose what path to walk. No one can help us with it. (Menyara)”

— Sherrilyn Kenyon

“Consider: The mouth is the only bit of erotic landscape visible when a woman is dressed. It is the symbol of every moist cavern a woman possesses, which all men are bound to seek out, we have no choice.”

— Therese Anne Fowler

“We have no choice but to be guilty. God is unthinkable if we are innocent.”

— Archibald MacLeish

“The human body and mind are tremendous forces that are continually amazing scientists and society. Therefore, we have no choice but to keep an open mind as to what the human being can achieve.”

— Evelyn Glennie

“If we really want to be full and generous in spirit, we have no choice but to trust at some level.”

— Rita Dove

“So, I think even in Saudi Arabia there is movement. And we have to remember that over the years they've stabilized the oil price and that is tremendously important for the economies of the world. I think we have no choice but to work with the government of Saudi Arabia.”

— Frank Carlucci

“Old Glory in her majesty has so many promises in her wave that we have no choice but to keeping pledging and waving right back!”

— Johnnie Dent Jr.

“Sometimes we can choose the paths we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all.”

— Neil Gaiman

“We all have our things that we would rather live without. It's how we live with them when we have no choice that makes us or breaks us.”

— Tanya Masse

“Our family makes us who we are, defines us totally. When you go to a therapist or have analysis, whatever reason you go in for, they will always bring you back to your family. We're strong or weak according to what family we have. You might have left them long ago, might not even talk to them, but something lingers; we have no choice.”

— Sandrine Bonnaire

“We have no choice. We need the communion of souls and only here are they awake.”

— Dave Eggers

“As a species, I think we have no choice but to try and forecast pandemics.”

— Nathan Wolfe

“Lives are rivers. We imagine we can direct their paths, though in the end there's but one destination, and we end up being true to ourselves only because we have no choice.”

— Richard Russo

“When you loot or behave violently, you give grounds to those that try to justify illegal police abuse. You become the poster child for them to say, 'See, we have no choice but to shoot and kill, or use a chokehold, because just look at the way they behave.'”

— Al Sharpton

“Forecasting our futures is built into our psyches because we will soon have to manage that future. We have no choice. No matter how often we fail, we can never stop trying.”

— Alan Greenspan

“Politicians don't like to face unpleasant realities. In truth, nobody does, but as individuals, we have no choice; if we neglect to plan ahead, we are held accountable. Fail to meet your responsibilities at work, and you get fired. Ignore your car's gas gauge, and you get stranded.”

— Nathan Myhrvold

“The map of our life is folded in such a way that we cannot see one main road across it, but as it is opened out, we are constantly seeing new side roads. We think we are choosing, and we have no choice.”

— Jean Cocteau

“The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.”

— Barbara Kingsolver

“We imagine things - that we wouldn't be able to survive, but in fact, we do survive. We have no choice, so we do it.”

— Joan Didion

“No, let's make sure that people understand that this is a very important war that is helping to protect us here at home. And that we have no choice but to win it. As difficult as it is.”

— John Boehner

“Today we read books 'extensively,' often without sustained focus, and with rare exceptions we read each book only once. We value quantity of reading over quality of reading. We have no choice, if we want to keep up with the broader culture.”

— Joshua Foer

“The friends we have, these are choices that - unlike family, which we have no choice in, and I love my family, thank God - we've given ourselves, to some degree.”

— Dan Gilroy

“We write ourselves certain parts and then keep playing them as if we have no choice. But a tardy person can become a punctual one, if she chooses. You don't have to keep being the thing you have become. It is never too late.”

— Rachel Joyce

“Family is the one human institution we have no choice over. We get in simply by being born, and as a result we are involuntarily thrown together with a menagerie of strange and unlike people. Church calls for another step: to voluntarily choose to band together with a strange menagerie because of a common bond in Jesus Christ. I have found that such a community more resembles a family than any other human institution. Henri Nouwen once defined a community as "a place where the person you least want to live with always lives." His definition applies equally to the group that gathers each Thanksgiving and the group that congregates each Sunday morning. (p. 64-65, Church: Why Bother?)”

— Philip Yancey

“WindClan has traveled a long time. It's nearly a moon since ShadowClan drove us from our home. The weather is turning colder, and leaf-bare will be here soon. We have no choice but to stay.”

— Erin Hunter

“The statement, "The debt problem has become so extreme that we have no choice but to cut social spending" is presented as an objective assessment of our situation. But can you imagine a media commentator making the following assertion? "The debt problem has become so extreme that we have no choice but to raise taxes on the rich."”

— Linda McQuaig

“Whether we will be able to achieve world peace or not, we have no choice but to work toward that goal. If we allow love and compassion to be dominated by anger, we will sacrifice the best part of our human intelligence-wisdom, our ability to decide between right and wrong. Along with selfishness, anger is one of the most serious problems facing the world today.”

— Dalai Lama XIV

“We have to get money. We have no choice. It cost money to eat.”

— DJ Khaled

“We are headed toward the unknown, and we have no choice but to sit quietly in our hard seats and let ourselves be taken there.”

— Christina Baker Kline

“I will not sleep fine if Donald Trump wins and I will not sleep fine is Hillary Clinton wins. Whether you are looking at nuclear weapons, whether you are looking at expanding wars and their blowback, which will not stop as long as those wars continue to expand, or whether you're looking at the climate, in my view, we have no choice. This is an existential moment. We are deciding not only what kind of world we will have, but whether we will have a world or not. I think it's very important to get outside this box that tells us we are powerless, when in fact, we are powerful.”

— Jill Stein

“Often we have no choice about doing things, but we can always choose how to do them.”

— Norman Vincent Peale

“The imagination made us human, but being human, becoming more human, is a greater burden than we imagined. We have no choice but to imagine ourselves more human than we are.”

— Wright Morris

“All humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos. That can't be disproved, but we have no choice but to follow our senses.”

— Isaac Asimov

“We have no choice, we must all die. How we live, however, is entirely of our choosing.”

— Simon Sinek

“To undo mistakes is always harder than not to create them originally, but we seldom have foresight. Therefore, we have no choice but to try to correct our past mistakes.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

“The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices - submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all means in our power in defence of our people, our future, and our freedom”

— Nelson Mandela

“God is real. God is here now. God is this moment revealed. For the most part, we are lost in the past and future world of the mind. To experience the living Presence of God in all things present, we will have come to where God is. We will have to become fully present. Otherwise we have no choice but to believe in God or disbelieve in God and neither is true, for the truth is beyond belief!”

— Leonard Jacobson

“Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.”

— Christopher Hitchens

“If we have free will, by definition we cannot be granted it. We can't be given it. My [-audio-recording-distorted-] paradox states that 'Of course we have free will, we have no choice.' To say that it's a gift is to negate the whole concept of free will on its face. So, if that isn't self-evident, I can't think of anything that would meet the definition of being self-evident.”

— Christopher Hitchens

“There is no longer a clear, bright line dividing America's domestic concerns and America's foreign policy concerns ... If we want America to stay on the right track, if we want other people to be on that track and have the chance to enjoy peace and prosperity, we have no choice but to try to lead the train.”

— William J. Clinton