Jose Ortega y Gasset Quotes

Your one certainty in life, your power as a human being, is that you have a choice in every situation about what you do next and about how you take what has happened to you.

I am, therefore I'll think.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

Transcendence constitutes selfhood.

It's very clearly stated in the film: You make your own choices, and what you're always fighting is ego.

You're not a product of your nature. That is your genetic makeup or your nurture, the things that have happened to you. Of course those things affect you powerfully, but they do not determine you.

You are where you are today because you have chosen to be there.

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

We are what we make.

Nothing in your past is in your present making you do anything you don't choose to do. You are not your past history! You are not your past failures! You are not how others have at one time treated you! You are only who you are and what you do now in this moment.

It is better for you to take responsibility for your life as it is, instead of blaming others, or circumstances, for your predicament. As your eyes open, you'll see that your state of health, happiness, and every circumstance of your life has been, in large part, arranged by you - consciously or unconsciously.

In one sense I feel that my book is a one-woman argument against determinism.

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

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

I think and that is all that I am.

Everybody eventually discovers that they are an individual with the power to affect their own lives and make it better or not.

Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life. You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm a character being written, or if I'm writing myself.

On some level, we as human beings can be who we want to be.

Ideas matter. The world matters. Our lives matter, and the choices we make as we navigate our lives perhaps matter most of all.

There is a great suspicion of saying that anyone, especially a child, is 'the product of destiny,' or 'formed by fate,' or 'predestined for a certain life.' I am suspicious, too, of efforts to cage children or adults in preconceived ideas of who they are or should be.

I don't have dreams. How can I say it? I myself am a dream.

We are each responsible for all of our experiences.

Life is what you make of it. You can make it easy on yourself or you can make it hard.