Alternatives Quotes

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. ~ John F. Kennedy

I never have been insecure, because I see what a waste it is. I know there is a solution to insecurity. I don't tend to be thrown by problems that don't have solutions. And insecurity has a wealth of alternatives. ~ Drew Barrymore

America, can always be counted upon to do the right thing in the end, having first exhausted the available alternatives. ~ Winston Churchill

At some point, we all have to decide how we are going to fail: by not going far enough, or by going too far. The only alternative for the most successful (maybe even the most fulfilled) people is the latter. ~ Harriet Rubin

18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available. ~ Bill Bryson

'Green' cannot be allowed to become an excuse for stealth taxes. And nor should 'green taxes' be about punishment. Instead, they should represent a switch of emphasis. So if domestic flights are taxed, it should be on the absolute condition that the money is ploughed into improving the alternatives, such as trains. ~ Zac Goldsmith

There is no alternative to the peaceful coexistence of cultures. ~ Salman Rushdie

All alternatives are open. Choose to be blissful. And then there are people who can be blissful even when they are imprisoned, and there are people who remain miserable even when they are living in marble palaces. It all depends on you. ~ Rajneesh

The same products, services or technologies can fail or succeed depending on the business model you choose. Exploring the possibilities is critical to finding a successful business model. Settling on first ideas risks the possibility of missing potential that can only be discovered by prototyping and testing different alternatives. ~ Alexander Osterwalder

The American press is extraordinarily free and vigorous, as it should be. It should be, not because it is free of inaccuracy, oversimplification and bias, but because the alternative to that freedom is worse than those failings. ~ Robert Bork

Because the alternative sucks! ~ Rachel Vincent

Considering the alternative ... it's not too bad at all. ~ Maurice Chevalier

Changeless society is characterized by the absense of alternatives. ~ George Soros

And by the way, I know my title said "10 Reasons" and I only listed "6". I didn't learn to count in college. ~ James Altucher

Protection against this general monopoly is as difficult as protection against pollution. People will face a danger that threatens their own self-interest but not one that threatens society as a whole. Many more people are against cars than are against driving them. They are against cars because they pollute and because they monopolize traffic. They drive cars
because they consider the pollution created by one car insignificant, and because they do not feel personally deprived of freedom when they drive. It is also difficult to be protected against monopoly when a society is already littered with roads, schools, or hospitals, when independent action has been paralyzed for so long that the ability for it seems to have atrophied, and when simple alternatives seem beyond the reach of the imagination. Monopoly is hard to get 4d of when it has frozen not
only the shape of the physical world but also the range of behavior and of imagination. Radical monopoly is generally discovered only when it is too late. ~ Ivan Illich

There had been a head of the FDA (who later turned out to be a fraud) his name was Fishbein and he was rampantly opposed to any alternative therapy. He went after Hoxsey, the Hoxsey therapy back in the 1940's and 50's, and destroyed Hoxsey. But not before Hoxsey sued the AMA and Fishbein and [proved] that the therapy actually worked. But it didn't help him because they closed him down anyhow ~ Gary Null

Ordinary men and women may often feel unmotivated to exert their citizenship, either because they cannot tell the difference between the different alternatives, or because they have lost faith in the political classes, or because they feel that the really important issues are not in their power to decide. ~ Patricio Aylwin

Ironically, as some people become harder, they use softer words to describe dark deeds. This, too, is part of being sedated by secularism. Needless abortion, for instance, is a "reproductive health procedure, ... " "Illegitimacy" gives way to the wholly sanitized words "non-marital birth" or "alternative parenting." ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Love of others and love of ourselves are not alternatives. On the contrary, an attitude of love towards themselves will be found in all those who are capable of loving others. ~ Erich Fromm

For both men and women, Good Men can be somewhat disturbing to be around because they usually do not act in ways associated with typical men; they listen more than they talk; they self-reflect on their behavior and motives, they actively educate themselves about women's reality by seeking out women's culture and listening to women…. They avoid using women for vicarious emotional expression…. When they err - and they do err - they look to women for guidance, and receive criticism with gratitude. They practice enduring uncertainty while waiting for a new way of being to reveal previously unconsidered alternatives to controlling and abusive behavior. They intervene in other men's misogynist behavior, even when women are not present, and they work hard to recognize and challenge their own. Perhaps most amazingly, Good Men perceive the value of a feminist practice for themselves, and they advocate it not because it's politically correct, or because they want women to like them, or even because they want women to have equality, but because they understand that male privilege prevents them not only from becoming whole, authentic human beings but also from knowing the truth about the world…. They offer proof that men can change. ~ Bell Hooks

He did not smile at his employees, he did not take them out for drinks, he never inquired about their families, their love lives or their church attendance. He responded only to the essence of a man: to his creative capacity. In this office one had to be competent. There were no alternatives, no mitigating considerations. But if a man worked well, he needed nothing else to win his employer's benevolence: it was granted, not as a gift, but as a debt. It was granted, not as affection, but as recognition. It bred an immense feeling of self-respect within every man in that office. ~ Ayn Rand

I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and holds that the only alternative to a pair of extreme positions lies somewhere between them. More fruitful perspectives often require that we step off the line to a site outside the dichotomy. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

For a healthy alternative to buffalo wings, slide the bone of a human finger into a block of tofu and bake. ~ Giada De Laurentiis

If oil companies were to invest their high profits into alternative fuel research it will help America move toward new forms of energy. ~ Rick Renzi

[When asked how it felt to be a female prime minister:] I don't know: I've never experienced the alternative. ~ Margaret Thatcher

A major assumption that underlies this selection is that it is only within work that is progressive, experimental or avant-garde that staid, old-fashioned images and ideas about gender can be challenged and alternatives imagined. I have never seen a ballet performance that has not disappointed me. ~ Ramsay Burt

Sometimes survival is the worst alternative there is ~ Joanne Harris

Who can control his fate? asks the ruined Othello. No one, indeed. But everyone controls his option, chooses his alternative. ~ Joseph Furphy

The idea of Original Sin - of guilt where there is no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives available - is anti-self-esteem by its very nature. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality. ~ Nathaniel Branden

You know how sometimes you tell yourself that you have a choice, but really you don't have a choice? Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they apply to you. ~ Rick Yancey

This was what happiness felt like - this wondrous, miraculous alternative to dread. ~ Meg Rosoff

To be ignorant or unconvinced of one's own needs has become the unforgivable anti-social act. The good citizen is one who imputes standardized needs to himself with such conviction that he drowns out any desire for alternatives, much less the renunciation of need. ~ Ivan Illich

It is clear that these are alternative methods of co-ordinating production. Yet, having regard to the fact that, if production is regulated by price movements, production could be carried on without any organization at all might we ask, why is there any organization? ~ Ronald Coase

Then Alan looked thoughtful and seemed reluctant to speak, perhaps because he had just written the sequel to the Star Wars novelization that Lucas had sold to Ballantine Books, but in his reserved and gentlemanly fashion he told the audience of a day when he had seen a rough cut of the film and had remarked on just this scientific illiteracy to Lucas. He had even suggested a workable alternative ... no, two workable alternatives ... and Lucas had said words to the effect of (approximate quote), "There's a lot of money tied up in this film and people expect to hear a boom when something blows up, so I'll give them the boom." And at that moment, the cynicism showed through. ~ Harlan Ellison

Sometimes, in the face of an infinity of alternatives, a straightforward result is all the more remarkable for being so. ~ Christian Rudder

The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action. ~ Zadie Smith

If language is lost, humanity is lost. If writing is lost, certain kinds of civilization and society are lost, but many other kinds remain - and there is no reason to think that those alternatives are inferior. ~ Robert Bringhurst

I have been fascinated by men and women of courage. People who took brave decisions in the service of great causes especially when more comfortable and far less dangerous alternatives were open to them ~ Gordon Brown

The alternate media are becoming important and viable alternatives to playing live. Records, videos, that kind of thing. They're going to start to count for something. Because there's only a limited amount of us-time available to us. ~ Jerry Garcia

I should say many things. Mexico has been one of the losers of the 20th century. We tried many different alternatives to development and unfortunately we have 40 percent of the population poor; we have a per capita income that is extremely low. ~ Vicente Fox

People often seem surprised that I choose to write science fiction and fantasy - I think they expect a history professor to write historical fiction, or literary fiction, associating academia with the kinds of novels that academic lit critics prefer. But I feel that speculative fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, is a lot more like the pre-modern literature I spend most of my time studying than most modern literature is. Ursula Le Guin has described speculative fiction authors as "realists of a larger reality" because we imagine other ways of being, alternatives to how people live now, different worlds, and raise questions about hope and change and possibilities that different worlds contain.

....

Writing for a more distant audience, authors tended to be speculative, using exotic perspectives, fantastic creatures, imaginary lands, allegories, prophecies, stories within stories, techniques which, like science fiction and fantasy, use alternatives rather than one reality in order to ask questions, not about the way things are, but about plural ways things have been and could be. Such works have an empathy across time, expecting and welcoming an audience as alien as the other worlds that they describe. When I read Voltaire responding to Francis Bacon, responding to Petrarch, responding to Boethius, responding to Seneca, responding to Plutarch, I want to respond to them too, to pass it on. So it makes sense to me to answer in the genre people ha ~ Ada Palmer

Good fortune and talent are both ingredients of success, but like any recipe, they can be substituted with clever alternatives. The one irreplaceable ingredient I've found, however, is work. ~ Shane Snow

While there is widespread recognition that the War on Drugs is racist and that politicians have refused to invest in jobs or schools in their communities, parents of offenders and ex-offenders still feel intense shame - shame that their children have turned to crime despite the lack of obvious alternatives. One mother of an incarcerated teen, Constance, described her angst this way: "Regardless of what you feel like you've done for your kid, it still comes back on you, and you feel like, 'Well, maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I messed up. You know, maybe if I had a did it this way, then it wouldn't a happened that way.'" After her son's arrest, she could not bring herself to tell friends and relatives and kept the family's suffering private. Constance is not alone. ~ Michelle Alexander

I have quite a robust relationship with regret. You simply don't know what the alternative would have been. ~ Juliet Stevenson

The alternatives in my life went through my mind. Unemployed, alone, despairing, watching daytime TV. That couldn't end well.

Or helping people, like genuinely making a difference. Imagine waking up and doing that every day? ~ Ruth Ahmed

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might. ~ Winston S. Churchill

I try not to be old. I try not to think, When I was your age..., but often, I do remember when I was their age. I enjoyed school; I loved learning and worked hard. Most people I went to school with did too. We partied hard, but we still showed up to class and did what we had to do. An alarming number of my students don't seem to want to be in college. They are in school because they don't feel they have a choice or have nothing better to do; because their parents are making them attend college; because, like most of us, they've surrendered to the rhetoric that to succeed in this country you need a college degree. They are not necessarily incorrect. And yet, all too often, I find myself wishing I could teach more students who actually want to be in school, who don't resent the education being foisted upon them. I wish there were viable alternatives for students who would rather be anywhere but in a classroom. I wish, in all things, for a perfect world. ~ Roxane Gay

Strange, the impact of History, the grip it had on us, yet it was nothing but words. Accidental accretions for the most part, leaving most of the story out. We have not yet begun to explore the true power of the Word, I thought. What if we broke all the rules, played games with the evidence, manipulated language itself, made History a partisan ally? Of course, the Phantom was already onto this, wasn't he? Ahead of us again. What were his dialectical machinations if not the dissolution of the natural limits of language, the conscious invention of a space, a spooky artificial no-man's land, between logical alternatives. I loved to debate both sides of any issue, but thinking about that strange space in between made me sweat. Paradox was one thing I hated more than psychiatrists and lady journalists. ~ Robert Coover

There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad; not changing things, but generally considered good and bad throughout the ages and throughout the species. Of the good, we think always of wisdom, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, humility; and the qualities of cruelty, greed, self-interest, graspingness, and rapacity are universally considered undesirable. And yet in our structure of society, the so-called and considered good qualities are invariable concomitants of failure, while the bad ones are the cornerstones of success ... Perhaps no other animal is so torn between alternatives. Man might be described fairly adequately, if simply, as a two-legged paradox. ~ John Steinbeck

The man in the headdress nodded. "On that note, I'd like to quickly ask David if there's been any headway in getting the air conditioning back online." A slight murmur of discontent indicated the importance of this matter, directed at a blond young man with a tanning-bed complexion. "Well, Gary," he sighed. "There isn't much we can do without electricity, but my team has been researching alternatives. One of my engineers proposed a system of fans powered by dogs in giant hamster wheels, but the major issue there is our limited dog inventory. We'll keep looking into it. ~ Yahtzee Croshaw

Vegetarianism is an act of the imagination. It reflects an ability to imagine alternatives to the texts of meat. ~ Carol J. Adams

The real alternative to power of the rich is not power of the poor. It's just plain power. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

I am an optimist by nature and believe strongly that technology can be brought to bear to create alternatives, even in crisis situations. ~ Vinton Cerf

Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves. ~ Alain De Botton

Privatisation is presented as being the only alternative to an inefficient, corrupt state. In fact, it is not a choice at all ... it is a mutually profitable business contract between the private company (preferably foreign) and the ruling elite of the Third World ~ Arundhati Roy

Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments. ~ Ivan Krastev

You realize as a director that when you are cutting a film, you want to have alternatives. You need color and choices. You don't want four takes that are identical. ~ Dolph Lundgren

Is the brain designed to make us flare in anger when we think we are being attacked? Fine - but most of us learn to count to ten and find alternatives to beating the other guy with a cudgel. An appreciation of how dissonance works, in ourselves and others, gives us some ways to override our wiring. And protect us from those who can't. ~ Carol Tavris

How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he's chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him ... ~ George Eliot

I became a vegetarian in 1958 and it was very difficult in those days to really maintain that because there weren't many options ... alternatives. But, now, it's a growing trend because ... the economics are there. See, there's simply enough people demanding it that it's profitable to supply vegetarians with those products. ~ Dennis Weaver

Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion - a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint - ... and Mr. Gish is but one of many to make it - the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution today. ~ Michael Ruse

At least at first, the new thing is rarely as good as the old thing was. If you need the alternative to be better than the status quo from the very start, you'll never begin. ~ Seth Godin

There's so many things happening with computers and what-not, where we may be able to live until 150 and even longer, but if the planet's not here for us to live on it, if we burn ourselves out from global warming and everything else, if we don't figure that out, if we don't figure out an alternative form of energy, I think we're in big, fat trouble. ~ Lisa Rinna

Its emotional character ... is probably mostly indescribable except as a sort of double bind in which any/all of the alternatives we associate with human agency - sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying - are not just unpleasant but literally horrible. ~ David Foster Wallace

Individuals can make choices about their own health treatments, but it is critical public health decisions are evidence based and that consumers have appropriate evidence based information about alternative health products. ~ Metiria Turei

I think there's plenty of evidence that we need to stop spewing so much carbon into the air, that we're contributing to climate change and that we ought to look for alternatives. ~ Lamar Alexander

You oil field workers, come and listen to me I'm goin' to tell you a story about old John D. That company union made a fool out of me. That company union don't charge no dues It leaves you a-singing them Rockefeller blues. That company union made a fool out of me. Takes that good ole C.I.O., boys To keep that oil a-rollin', rollin' over the sea. Takes that good ole C.I.O., boys To keep that oil a-rollin' over the sea. ~ Woody Guthrie

Sure, you can say nuclear power is somewhat less carbon-intensive than burning fossil fuels for energy; beating your children to death with a club will prevent them from getting hit by a car. Ravaging the Earth by one irreparable means is not a sensible way to prevent it from being destroyed by another. There are alternatives. We should choose them and use them. ~ Rebecca Solnit

It is my PRIDE, my damned, native, unconquerable Pride, that plunges me into Distraction. You must know that 19 - 20th of my Composition is Pride. I must either live a Slave, a Servant; to have no Will of my own, no Sentiments of my own which I may freely declare as such;
or DIE
perplexing alternative! ~ Thomas Chatterton

I am very sad that some designers are still using real fur when the fake alternatives are so effective and so easily obtainable. ~ Twiggy

The discounting presumably is to be done for each period of time at that rate of interest which represents the alternative cost of employing capital in the occupation in question; that is, at the rate which the entrepreneur could obtain in other investments ~ Kenneth E. Boulding

I have total respect for anyone who discovers a band like Snow Patrol. I would be hopeless at signing a rock band, or anything alternative, cause I don't know what that audience are into and I don't particularly like that kind of music. ~ Simon Cowell

A lot of reality TV is repellent, but that doesn't diminish the qualities of some of the people who take part. There are decent people in there who have no alternatives. ~ Val McDermid

You get tough when you grow up unloved. People described me as a boyish girl - rather shy, but I didn't show it. I had an attitude. I was rather wild. I lied a lot because I knew the alternative was to be punished. As I got older I realised I didn't have to lie any more and it was a nice feeling. I could be myself. ~ Maj Sjowall

This is a psychofield, a thoughtspace, essentially unstable. While most people conceptualise thinking as this straightforward linear thing, I see ideas spreading out into alternatives before one is selected. In this place every notion can potentially become reality. ~ Tade Thompson

It's unacceptable to tour using non-environmentally friendly fuel when there are alternatives. ~ KT Tunstall

I've never been into alternative, hipster rap music. ~ Harmony Korine

I think capitalism will survive, because no attractive alternatives exist now ~ Jack Goldstone

And what is the reaction of the British politcal class? Well the Lib Dems, still think that the Euro is a success! I don't quiet think where Cleggy gets this from, I don't know. Prehaps he is cosidering an alternative career, as a stand up comedian, once he's out of politics. ~ Nigel Farage

When you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil. ~ Ayn Rand

No longer an innocent newborn, Elizabeth can tease, joke, and play make-believe because a gap has opened between what she knows to be so and what she pretends or imagines. More than any other quality, this gap is what distinguishes our species, enabling us to deceive one another and ourselves, but also enabling us to see beyond the way things happen to be, to envision alternatives, to make art and science and revolution, to invent things new under the sun. ~ Scott Russell Sanders

I think anyone who comes upon a Nautilus machine suddenly will agree with me that its prototype was clearly invented at some time in history when torture was considered a reasonable alternative to diplomacy. ~ Anna Quindlen

There's no real alternative to what there is. ~ Louis Auchincloss

Thank you to BBC6 Music and Something Else for the opportunity to broadcast my corner of electronic and alternative music across the airwaves for the last 6 years. # RIP6MIX ~ Erol Alkan

It kills me when I see some metal band trying to pass themselves off as an 'alternative band.' ~ Dimebag Darrell

On issue after issue, the polls - and these are not snapshot polls; these are polls over a consistent period of time - show that most Americans share what one could call core liberal or progressive values: investment in health care and education over tax cuts; fair trade over free trade; corporate accountability over deregulation; environmental protection over laissez-faire policies; defending Social Security and Medicare over privatizing them; raising the minimum wage over eliminating it. The country prefers progressive alternatives to the failed policies of the conservative right. ~ Katrina Vanden Heuvel

With leading research universities, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and private companies like Blue Sun working on developing alternative fuels, Colorado is poised to become an international leader in clean energy. ~ Ken Salazar

Contemplation is an alternative consciousness that refuses to identify with or feed what are only passing shows. It is the absolute opposite of addiction, consumerism or any egoic consciousness. ~ Richard Rohr

We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives. ~ Pema Chodron

The Democratic Party is that amazing thing, out of power for six years and yet exhausted. They're pale, tired, and unready. Too bad, since it's their job to be an alternative, not an embarrassment. ~ Peggy Noonan

The choice between two of something is not a choice at all, but rather the opportunity to subscribe to the value system which holds the two presented choices as mutually exclusive alternatives. ~ Kate Bornstein

We have not noticed how fast the rest has risen. Most of the industrialized world--and a good part of the nonindustrialized world as well--has better cell phone service than the United States. Broadband is faster and cheaper across the industrial world, from Canada to France to Japan, and the United States now stands sixteenth in the world in broadband penetration per capita. Americans are constantly told by their politicians that the only thing we have to learn from other countries' health care systems is to be thankful for ours. Most Americans ignore the fact that a third of the country's public schools are totally dysfunctional (because their children go to the other two-thirds). The American litigation system is now routinely referred to as a huge cost to doing business, but no one dares propose any reform of it. Our mortgage deduction for housing costs a staggering $80 billion a year, and we are told it is crucial to support home ownership, except that Margaret Thatcher eliminated it in Britain, and yet that country has the same rate of home ownership as the United States. We rarely look around and notice other options and alternatives, convinced that "we're number one. ~ Fareed Zakaria

Ignorance deprives people of freedom because they do not know what alternatives there are. It is impossible to choose to do what one has never "heard of." ~ Ralph Barton Perry

We have the alternative. "Do I want to be on the subway looking at these people, or do I want to be in my phone looking at my people?" ~ Douglas Rushkoff

Think deeply about things. Don't just go along because that's the way things are or that's what your friends say. Consider the effects, consider the alternatives, but most importantly, just think. ~ Aaron Swartz

If God really became incarnate, and if His Incarnation can with justice compel man to change his life,then we have no alternative but to conceive of this Incarnation as something which is still present and which will remain present for all future time ... What happens in the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist is something for which all religions of mankind have exressed longing, dimly sensed was coming, and as a rule even prefigured- the physical presence of the divine Logos made man, and the presence of his sacrificial death, in the midst of the congregation celebrating the mysteries. ~ Josef Pieper

You say: "There are persons who lack education" and you turn to the law. But the law is not, in itself, a torch of learning which shines its light abroad. The law extends over a society where some persons have knowledge and others do not; where some citizens need to learn, and others can teach. In this matter of education, the law has only two alternatives: It can permit this transaction of teaching-and-learning to operate freely and without the use of force, or it can force human wills in this matter by taking from some of them enough to pay the teachers who are appointed by government to instruct others, without charge. But in the second case, the law commits legal plunder by violating liberty and property. ~ Frederic Bastiat

Science and technology has tried to offer an alternative to religion by making a god out of human reason, but that didn't work out too well. ~ Thomas Keating

If the time comes when our culture tires of the endless homicidal feuds, despairs of the use of force and war as a means of bringing peace, becomes discontent with the half-lives that its members are living - only then will our culture seriously look for alternatives. ~ Carl Rogers

In business, organization is an absolute necessity, not an alternative. ~ Larry Burkett