"I believe that what we get out of life is what we've set ourselves up to get, so there's no such thing as an inconsequential decision. Our destinies are the culmination of all the choices we've made along the way, which is why it's imperative to listen hard to your inner voice when it speaks up.

"What is imperative is to keep the momentum going. The difference between success and failure is very thin.

The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were used to rationalize the massacre of infidels, the ownership of women, the beating of children, dominion over animals, and the persecution of heretics and homosexuals. Humanitarian reforms such as the elimination of cruel punishment, the dissemination of empathy-inducing novels, and the abolition of slavery were met with fierce opposition in their time by ecclesiastical authorities and their apologists. The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people's interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise.

To live in any true sense of the word is to reject others; to accept them, one must be able to renounce, to do oneself violence, to act against one's own nature, to weaken oneself; we conceive freedom only for ourselves - we extend it to our neighbours only at the cost of exhausting efforts; whence the precariousness of liberalism, a defiance of our instincts, a brief and miraculous success, a state of exception, at the antipodes of our deepest imperatives.

Faith in God is optional, but faith in the self ? in the spirit within, is imperative.

Peace with Israel is a strategic imperative for Jordan.

Adapt or perish now as ever is nature's inexorable imperative.

With tens of thousands of patients dying every year from preventable medical errors it is imperative that we embrace available technologies and drastically improve the way medical records are handled and processed.

It is imperative that when thousands of selfless volunteers respond to those who have incurred the wrath of a natural disaster that legal liability need not be hanging over their heads.

We're going to need to absorb some pain. The Republicans want to pile all the pain on people who can least afford it and the middle class and Democrats under his leadership want to make sure that we can address deficit reduction and continue to make investments and shared sacrifice is going to be imperative in order to be able to do that.

Humor is imperative more important than food. You have a choice when someone dies. You can lie down or get back into life. Do something for someone else.

It is imperative for the health and safety of millions of workers that we ensure that breathing systems needed for protection are widely available convenient and economical.

Challenges of historic import threaten America's future. Action on the deficit economy energy health care and much more is imperative yet our legislative institutions fail to act. Congress must be reformed.

Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it to accept it no matter where it leads him.

Creative freedom is an imperative for me but it doesn't really exist in a Hollywood game.

The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism.

It is absolutely imperative that we protect preserve and pass on this genetic heritage for man and every other living thing in as good a condition as we received it.

I believe we should reframe our response to climate change as an imperative for growth rather than merely being a way of being green or meeting environmental commitments.

Beauty has been democratised. No longer the preserve of movie stars and models but available to all. But while the invitation to beauty is welcomed it has become not so much an option as an imperative.

If those committed to the quest fail they will be forgiven. When lost they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone whether successful or not provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.