Al Franken Quotes

Between stimulus and response, there is a space where we choose our response.

If we become aware of what's happening before we act, behaviour becomes a function of choice rather than a result of an impulse or trigger. You begin to control your world more as opposed to the outside world controlling you.

We benefit, intellectually and personally, from the interplay between different selves, from the balance between long-term contemplation and short-term impulse. We should be wary about tipping the scales too far. The community of selves shouldn't be a democracy, but it shouldn't be a dictatorship, either.

I can be pretty reactive, and I've learned over time to be less reactive: to stop and think before I make decisions.

Behaviors are a choice. Feelings are sometimes out of our control. Behavior has to do with choices.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

One thing I want you to understand is if I make a decision, it's my decision.

I don't feel guilt. Whatever I wish to do, I do.

My intellect has always been more responsible than my emotions for how I respond to the world.

If I decide to be indecisive, that's my decision.

When people have a willpower failure, it's because they haven't anticipated a situation that's going to come along.

Independence doesn't mean you decide the way you want.

You always do what you want to do. This is true with every act. You may say that you had to do something, or that you were forced to, but actually, whatever you do, you do by choice. Only you have the power to choose for yourself.

Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go.

You decide the things that ultimately you do. You have choices in this world, and that's how I live.

No one can drive us crazy unless we give them the keys.

When I lose my temper it's because I decide to. If I do something it's because I want to do it.

It's essential to distinguish between events that are really beyond your control and events you caused yourself.

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

... fluctuating emotions ... [lead] us to excesses of both intervention and abdication.

When a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

I am going to walk away when I'm ready to walk away. Not because of a win or a loss.

People are decisions and actions.

I still think carefully about what I'm going to say. I use me heart and head technique, in which the heart says, 'get stuck in, Dennis!', and the head says, 'just a minute... ' But I probably don't use this as often as some others.