A Quote by Robert Grudin

We commonly think of freedom as the ability to define alternatives and choose between them. The creative mind exceeds this liberty in being able to redefine itself and reality at large, generating whole new sets of alternatives.

Robert Grudin

Quote Topics

Ability Able Alternatives Being Between Choose Commonly Creative Creative Mind Define Freedom Generating Itself Large Liberty Mind New Reality Redefine Sets Them Think Whole

Quote Author

Robert Grudin
American - Writer
Born: March 11, 1938

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict - alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.

Dorothy Thompson

In Hollywood, the ... basic freedom of being able to choose between alternatives is absent. The gifted people who have the capacity for choice cannot exercise it; the executives who technically have the freedom of choice do not actually have it, because they usually lack the knowledge and imagination necessary for making such a choice.

Hortense Powdermaker

People need to stand up hold hands, talk about alternatives. Alternatives, alternatives, alternatives. And people united will never, ever be defeated.

Lois Gibbs

Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose.

C. Wright Mills

Think of the design process as involving first the generation of alternatives and then the testing of these alternatives against a whole array of requirements and restraints.

Herbert Simon

Freedom is the awareness of alternatives and of the ability to choose. It is contingent upon consciousness, and so may be gained or lost, extended or diminished.

Allen Wheelis

We have to give people the freedom to choose lifestyles and material satisfactions that suit their needs, and we have to redefine need itself. We can't redefine need among ghetto people by telling them we should all give up our TV sets or automobiles: we have to tell them there's enough to go around, now let's talk about using it sensibly.

Murray Bookchin

Most business processes are about making choices from a set of existing alternatives. Clearly, if all your competition is doing the same, then differentiation is tough. In order to innovate, we have to have new alternatives and new solutions to problems, and that is what design can do.

Tim Brown

As long as you are free, you are free to select and choose alternatives, provided that you are willing to accept the responsibility for being free. And after you've tried your alternatives, and they don't work as you would wish, don't blame me. Blame your choice. Try another alternative.

Leo Buscaglia

If decisions were a choice between alternatives, decisions would come easy. Decision is the selection and formulation of alternatives.

Kenneth Burke

A failure to learn about Satan's plan for man here on earth would be fatal to the full exercise of free agency. The reason for this lies in the fact that . . . free agency is the opportunity to choose between good and evil. To intelligently make such a choice one must understand the alternatives-both of them. To the extent one is ignorant of these alternatives, to that same extent he has not made a complete choice. Until a person understands Satan's plan, he can never be certain he does not believe in it and is not helping to carry it out.

H. Verlan Andersen

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

Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.

Saul Bellow

The more equally attractive two alternatives seem, the harder it can be to choose between them - no matter that, to the same degree, the choice can only matter less.