This page lists my all-time favorite choice and priority quotes to live an essential life.
You can find links to more intentional living quotes at the bottom of this page.
When you’re ready to dive deeper, here’s some recommended reading on choices and priorities:
35+ Choice & Priority Quotes to Live an Essential Life
Top Choice Quotes
“We are our choices.” — Jean-Paul Sartre
“If it is to be, it is up to me.” — William H. Johnsen
“Our options may be things, but a choice—a choice is an action.” — Greg McKeown
“The choices you make today determine your autobiography tomorrow.” — James Altucher
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” — Viktor Frankl
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” — Viktor E. Frankl
“Once we know and are aware, we are responsible for our action and our inaction. We can do something about it or ignore it. Either way, we are still responsible.” — Jean-Paul Sartre
“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.” — Jean-Paul Sartre
“No thefts of free will reported.” — Epictetus
“Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others’ choices make us.” — Richie Norton
“Anytime you fail to say ‘no’ to a nonessential, you are really saying yes by default.” — Greg McKeown
“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.” — Hunter S. Thompson
“What is a person but a collection of choices?” — Westworld
Top Priority Quotes
“Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.” — Arthur Balfour
“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” — John C. Maxwell
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” — William Bruce Cameron
“What is important is not the quantity of your knowledge, but its quality. You can know many things without knowing that which is most important.” — Blaise Pascal
“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” — Lin Yutang
“The first thing that everybody should do is simply do less.” — Carl Honoré
“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.” — Oscar Wilde
“What’s the ONE THING you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” — Gary Keller
“Going small is a simple approach to extraordinary results … It works all the time, anywhere and on anything … It has only one purpose—to ultimately get you to the point. When you go as small as possible, you’ll be staring at one thing.” — Gary Keller & Jay Papasan
“Too often productivity gurus focus on how to do things quickly, but the vast majority of things people do quickly should not be done at all.” — Marc Chernoff
“There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.” — Peter Drucker
“What is not worth doing is not worth doing well.” — Abraham Maslow
“Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.” — Peter Drucker
“Everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things.” — Seneca
“Do what you’re doing, don’t do what you’re not doing.” or “Do what you’re doing when you are doing it, don’t do what you’re not doing when you are not doing it.” — The Sedona Method
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” — Henry David Thoreau
“What’s important now? After a moment of reflection I realized that until I knew what was important right now, what was important right now was to figure out what was important right now!” — Greg McKeown
“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” — Stephen R Covey
“To follow, without halt, one aim: that’s the secret of success.” — Anna Pavlova
“The man who chases two rabbits catches none.” — Confucius
“To do two things at once is to do neither.” — Publilius Syrus
“Give vigorous attention to the performance of the task at hand with precise analysis … and to vacating your mind from all its other thoughts.” — Marcus Aurelius
“Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?'” — Marcus Aurelius
“My life is about subtraction, carving away the excess to reveal the essential.” — Rosie Leizrowice
“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.” — John Maeda
“When things aren’t adding up in your life, start subtracting.” — James Altucher
“The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next 500 years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities.” — Greg McKeown
More Intentional Living Quotes:
