Hobson's Choice Quotes

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Through the vistas of the years every age but our own seems glamorous and golden. We yearn for the yesterdays and tomorrows, never realizing that we are faced with Hobson’s Choice … that today, bitter or sweet, anxious or calm, is the only day for us. The dream of time is the traitor, and we are all accomplices to the betrayal of ourselves.
Alfred Bester (Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester)
Hobson’s Choice.
Stephen King (Fairy Tale)
A Hobson’s choice, that was what she had to offer George—a choice that wasn’t really a choice at all—like the executioner asking if you’d prefer to have your head severed from your body, or your body from your head.
Jodi Picoult (A Spark of Light)
Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.” There it was, uncompromising, noble— Jesus addressing the Pharisees. It was the everlasting choice for wholeness and soundness in a man or in a nation.
Laura Z. Hobson (Gentleman's Agreement)
Hobson’s choice is sometimes taken to mean a dilemma or difficult decision, but in fact means no choice at all. It derives from a sixteenth-century Cambridge stable-keeper named Thomas Hobson, who hired out horses on a strict rotation. The customer was allowed to take the one nearest the stable door or none at all.
Bill Bryson (Troublesome Words)
I had the grace to say that he flattered me but let it lie when he answered that I was too modest—even though I’m not handsome now and wasn’t then and modesty has never been one of my vices. “But Noisy thought all the girls were beautiful, too—and in one case this may have been true and certainly several of them were pretty. “But he asked me what had become of Olga and added, ‘Golly, what a little beauty she was!’ “Kinfolk, Olga wasn’t even homely, she was ugly. Face like a mud pie, figure like a gunnysack—only on an outpost like Mars could she get by. What she did have was a warm and gentle voice and a sweet personality—which was enough, as a customer might pick her through Hobson’s choice on a busy night, but once he had done so, he picked her some later time on purpose. Mean to say, dears, beauty will lure a man into bed, but it won’t bring him back a second time, unless he’s awfully young or very stupid.
Robert A. Heinlein (Time Enough for Love)
The major shortages of judges, prosecutors, and public defenders, coupled with the number of people being held in jail awaiting rail has led to a crisis in which it is not possible for every defendant who wants a day in court to get one. So the courts need a way to keep the trials from taking place. By imprisoning poor people who cannot put up money for bail, the system uses the threat or reality of extended imprisonment to extract guilty pleas, even from people who are innocent or have other valid defenses. Not able to get a timely trial, they have only one option - plead guilty. It is a Hobson's choice, more so even than many of the defendants realize, because the guilty please have serious collateral consequences they may not even be aware of and which stay with them for the rest of their lives. But pleading guilty is what they do by the thousands, every day, all over America.
Peter Edelman (Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America)
It is not immodest, father. It's the fashion to wear bustles. HOBSON. Then to hell with the fashion.
Harold Brighouse (Hobson's Choice)
I'm a decent-minded man. I'm Hobson. I'm British middle class and proud of it. I stand for common sense and sincerity. You're
Harold Brighouse (Hobson's Choice)
You forget the majesty of trade and the unparalleled virtues of the British Constitution which are all based on the sanity of the middle classes, combined with the diligence of the working-classes. You're
Harold Brighouse (Hobson's Choice)
Magellan taxable investors have a Hobson’s choice. They must continue to pay high annual income and capital gains taxes by holding a tax-inefficient and underperforming fund—or pay a capital gains tax on all past profits, should they decide to exchange to another fund.
Taylor Larimore (The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing)