Individual Choice Quotes:

In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement - the number restriction (two and only two) - is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

- Charles Krauthammer

source: "Pandora and Polygamy". jewishworldreview.com. March 17, 2006.

topic: Gay, Individual Choice, Two, Autonomous, Traditional Marriage

Law has at least two roles: one is to define and regulate the limits of acceptable behavior. The other is to teach principles for individuals to make individual choices.

- Dallin H. Oaks

source: Source: www.mormonnewsroom.org

topic: Law, Individual Choice, Two

... patriarchy creates megapatterns that affect us all--even as we forge different individual choices within them--just as do themegapatterns of nationalism or racism.

- Gloria Steinem

topic: Individual Choice, Racism, Choices, Patriarchy

Any group or "collective," large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the "rights" of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking... A group, as such, has no rights.

- Ayn Rand

source: Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.385, Penguin

topic: Rights, Agreement, Individual Choice, Undertakings

The usual marriage in traditional cultures was arranged for by the families. It wasn't a person-to-person decision at all. . . . In the Middle Ages, that was the kind of marriage that was sanctified by the Church. And so the troubadour idea of real person-to-person Amor was very dangerous. . . . It is in direct contradiction to the way of the Church. The word AMOR spelt backwards is ROMA, the Roman Catholic Church, which was justifying marriages that were simply political and social in their character. And so came this movement validating individual choice, what I call following your bliss.

- Joseph Campbell

topic: Real, Character, Individual Choice, Troubadours, Amor

Morality is not defined and cannot be defined by individual choice.

- Rush Limbaugh

topic: Individual Choice, Choices, Morality

In or out of marriage, abortion is not an individual choice. At a minimum, three lives are involved.

- Boyd K. Packer

topic: Individual Choice, Choices, Abortion

Thus, and not otherwise, the world was made. Either something or nothing must depend on individual choices.

- C. S. Lewis

source: C.S. Lewis (1996). “Perelandra”, p.121, Simon and Schuster

topic: Individual Choice, Choices, World

Once you accept the fact that people have 'individual choices' and they're 'free' to make those choices. Free to make choices means without being influenced and I can't understand that at all. All of us are influenced in all our choices by the culture we live in, by our parents, and by the values that dominate. So, we're influenced. So there can't be free choices.

- Jacque Fresco

topic: Mean, Individual Choice, People

In a dynamic, decentralized system of individual choice and responsibility, people do not have to trust any authority but their own.

- Virginia Postrel

source: Virginia Postrel (2011). “The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise,”, p.168, Simon and Schuster

topic: Responsibility, People, Choices, Individual Choice

First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice.

- Benjamin Tucker

topic: Men, Choices, Doctrine, Individual Choice

Happiness is actually an individual choice, even in the midst of negative circumstances. It's not something our employers can give to us, though they can limit and influence that choice.

- Shawn Achor

topic: Giving, Choices, Negative, Individual Choice

In a sense technology is a tool of sort of individual choice, individual creativity, individual empowerment, individual access. My kids will never understand that it used to be kind of hard to access and find things, and know what the world knows and see what the world sees. Yet it becomes easier and easier every day.

- Steve Ballmer

topic: Creativity, Kids, Technology, Individual Choice

Kids are told there are no differences between boys and girls. They are told there is no such thing ultimately as right and wrong. Values are relative. Truth is relative. Morality is defined by individual choice. If that isn't a recipe for sexual harassment and other forms of sexual and physical abuse, I don't know what it is.

- Rush Limbaugh

topic: Girl, Kids, Boys, Individual Choice, Harassment

Freedom of religion, as the Founding Fathers saw it, was not just the right to associate oneself with a certain denomination but the right to disassociate without penalty. Belief or nonbelief was a matter of individual choice - a right underwritten in the basic charter of the nation's liberties.

- Norman Cousins

topic: Father, Choices, Atheism, Individual Choice, Denominations

Migration - whether emigration or return - at the micro level is an individual choice, and government both at the Centre and the states have role only to facilitate the decision of the individuals.

- Vayalar Ravi

topic: Government, Choices, Decision, Individual Choice, Emigration

A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government.

- Cass Sunstein

topic: Communication, Government, Self, Individual Choice

The vision of the anointed is one in which ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from 'society,' rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by 'society'.

- Thomas Sowell

source: Thomas Sowell (1995). “The Vision of the Anointed: Self-congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy”, Basic Books

topic: Sex, Believe, Responsibility, Individual Choice, Treated Unfairly

Make ethical choices in what we buy, do, and watch. In a consumer-driven society our individual choices, used collectively for the good of animals and nature, can change the world faster than laws.

- Marc Bekoff

source: Marc Bekoff (2007). “Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect”, p.171, Shambhala Publications

topic: Animal, Law, Choices, Individual Choice