Henry Ford was a clever man. He wanted to build the first people's car. Affordable. Reliable. Easy to work on. And so he did: the Model T. In his autobiography, he wrote: Any customer could have a car painted any color he wanted, as long as it was black.
Thomas Hobson
Hobson's Choice in spades. 'Take it or leave it' became proverbial, and continues to be a favorite device of parents and principals, preachers and presidents.
The phrase is often used incorrectly. It is not a dilemma, otherwise known as Morton's Fork. A dilemma, of course, is a choice between two equally undesirable outcomes: the devil and the deep blue sea; a rock and a hard place. It is not a matter of no choice at all, as it is sometimes defined. In a sense, no real choice is offered, no choice between this, that, and the other thing; but choice there is all the same. What it does mean is 'take what ya get, bud, or take a walk'.
Thomas Hobson was a man with a livery business in Cambridge, England, during the early 17th century. Though he had many horses to choose from, only the one currently nearest the stable door could be rented. That one horse or no horse at all. The wags from Cambridge University dubbed this Hobson's Choice. By the turn of the century Mr Hobson was enshrined in a poem by Milton, given a mention in 'The Spectator' No. 509 of 1712, and was on the lips of both plebians and plutocrats.
Hobson made enough prescient choices during his lifetime to mark himself as a worthy patron of the city of Cambridge. His support of a system of waterway runnels to improve sanitation and provide clean drinking water earned him a cenotaph etched with his name still standing over Hobson's Brook.
Choice, with its many difficulties, seems to foster aphorisms: If you get a lemon, make lemonade; It's all six of one a half dozen of another; Twain's 'you pays your money and take your choices'; and Frost's the path less taken. Catch-22, the title of Joseph Heller's novel, has been so well used it seems a cliche. Buridan's Ass, an obscure phrase named for an equally obscure Frenchman, was often used by Samuel Beckett as an apt analogy for the human condition. It posits an ass placed equal distance between a pile of straw and a pail of water. Unable to decide, the ass dies of inanition.
And the choices offered by the world wide web?