Daily Inspiration Quote by J. Martin Kohe

Kohe’s line sells freedom in a single clean unit: choice. Not choice as a lifestyle brand, but as the psychological hinge that turns a person from passenger into agent. Coming from a mid-20th-century psychologist, it reads like a quiet rebuttal to the era’s louder determinisms - whether Freud’s subterranean drives, Skinner’s behavioral programming, or the bureaucratic impulse to treat people as inputs and outputs. “Greatest power” is deliberately plainspoken, almost democratic; it smuggles a radical claim into a sentence that sounds like common sense.

The subtext is ethical as much as clinical. If choosing is our “greatest power,” then suffering, habit, trauma, and social constraint can be acknowledged without being granted total sovereignty. Kohe isn’t denying the weight of circumstance; he’s carving out a last jurisdiction: the moment of response. That’s why the verb matters. “Possesses” implies something inherent, not granted by the state, parents, or fate. It’s a property of personhood, not a privilege.

There’s also a subtle behavioral nudge embedded in the phrasing. By elevating choice to “power,” Kohe reframes responsibility as capacity, not punishment. The line flatters the reader, yes, but strategically: if you accept you have power, you’re harder to excuse, and easier to mobilize. It’s the kind of sentence that works in therapy because it’s both consoling and demanding - a hand on the shoulder that’s also a push.