231 Decision making Quotes

Acts which are essentially dishonourable must not be done; they would be justified only by calm contemplation of their correctness in abstract cases.

Every time I decide I want a child I get another pet. I have 3 dogs, 13 birds and 3 horses, what does that tell you?

Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line.

To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute.

I would suggest respectfully to the president that he is not the sole decider. The decider is a shared and joint responsibility.

The more sure you are, the more wrong you can be.

Vote wisely, even if that means not voting at all.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.

Reason must be the universal rule and guide; all things must be done according to reason without allowing oneself to be swayed by emotion.

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

At least half of my life's many mistakes can be safely put down to impetuosity: the other half derive from inertia.

Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning.

If you're going to have centralization, why not have it!

Whenever you have a possibility of going in two ways, either for peace or for war, for peaceful methods of for military methods, in the present age there is a strong prejudice for the peaceful ones. War seldom ever leads to good results.

I think there is some methodology in my travels.

I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind.

Bad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: for your pocket-book not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and a season passes away unimproved.

Statistics are no substitute for judgment.

If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.

Time is everything; five minutes make the difference between victory and defeat.

Nothing is as simple as we hope it will be.

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action; then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant.

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

A person knows when it just seems to feel right to them. Listen to your heart.

We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise.

There's often more than one correct thing. There's often more than one right thing. There's often more than one obvious thing.

Life is made up of a series of judgments on insufficient data, and if we waited to run down all our doubts, it would flow past us.

If one knows only what one is told, one does not know enough to be able to arrive at a well-balanced decision.

There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.

Decisions, particularly important ones, have always made me sleepy, perhaps because I know that I will have to make them by instinct, and thinking things out is only what other people tell me I should do.

Please don't ask me to do that which I've just said I'm not going to do, because you're burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering.

A princely mind will undo a private family.

He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things.

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

I do not, therefore, need any penetrating acuteness to see what I have to do in order that my volition be morally good. Inexperienced in the course of the world, incapable of being prepared for whatever might come to pass in it, I ask myself only: can you also will that your maxim become a universal law?

A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.

'I am afraid,' replied Elinor, 'that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.'

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.

Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits-a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.

Resolved, always to do that, which I shall wish I had done when I see others do it.

When issues of events like these my father is waiting for, are hanging in the scales of fate, the mind has the advantage of changing the principle of expectation three times, without which it would not have power to see it out. Curiosity governs the first moment; and the second moment is all economy to justify the expense of the first - and for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth moments, and so on to the day of judgment - 'tis a point of HONOUR. I need not be told, that the ethic writers have assigned this all to Patience; but that VIRTUE, methinks, has extent of domination sufficient of her own, and enough to do in it, without invading the few dismantled castles which HONOUR has left him upon the earth.

Life is full of decisions and judgments and guesses, and it gets to the point where you're so accustomed to making them you keep right on making them even when you don't strictly need to. You get into a what if thing, and you start speculating about what you would do if some problem was yours instead of somebody else's. It gets to be a habit. It was a habit Jack Reacher had in spades.

Between two evils, I generally like to pick the one I never tried before.

He who hesitates is a damned fool.

I generally had to give in.

People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.

I only had one shot in the locker and I fired it.

Once the 'what' is decided, the 'how' always follows. We must not make the 'how' an excuse for not facing and accepting the 'what.'

I don't think the public realizes how much soul-searching goes on in news organizations about what is the right thing to do.

Many receive advice, few profit by it.

While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity.

Nothing can be done at once hastily and prudently.

When it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso.

A committee is the only known form of life with a hundred bellies and no brain.

Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is - so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group.

Avoid making irrevocable decisions while tired or hungry. N.B.: Circumstances can force your hand. So think ahead!

Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate - and quickly.

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.

A rush of wind comes furiously now, down from the mountaintop. 'The ancient Greeks,' I say, 'who were the inventors of classical reason, knew better than to use it exclusively to foretell the future. They listened to the wind and predicted the future from that. That sounds insane now. But why should the inventors of reason sound insane?'

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best 20-20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.

I agree with Ron Paul, we marched in there, we can march out.

Americans treat history like a cookbook. Whenever they are uncertain what to do next, they turn to history and look up the proper recipe, invariably designated 'the lesson of history.'

'Is that wise, darling? Remember you have to reign all afternoon.'

I couldn't live with myself if I thought that these big strategic choices for my generation were there, and I wasn't even making them - or I was making them according to what was expedient rather than what I actually thought was right.

Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater.

When he received the cable from Admiral George Dewey reporting the capture of Manila, President William McKinley had to look up the location of the Philippines on a globe. 'I could not have told where those damned islands were within 2,000 miles,' he confessed later.

Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura's version of political theory.

Emotion has taught mankind to reason.

Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.

We could hold in Korea by constant maneuver and in an approximate area where our supply line advantages were in balance with the supply line disadvantages of the enemy, but we could hope at best for only an indecisive campaign with its terrible and constant attrition upon our forces if the enemy utilized its full military potential. I have constantly called for the new political decisions essential to a solution. Efforts have been made to distort my position. It has been said, in effect, that I was a warmonger. Nothing could be further from the truth. I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes. ... But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end.

I have come to a decision which I felt I should tell you and all of my fellow American citizens, as soon as I was certain in my own mind and in my own conscience that it is the right thing to do. I have learned already in this office that the difficult decisions always come to this desk. I must admit that many of them do not look at all the same as the hypothetical questions that I have answered freely and perhaps too fast on previous occasions. My customary policy is to try and get all the facts and to consider the opinions of my countrymen and to take counsel with my most valued friends. But these seldom agree, and in the end, the decision is mine. To procrastinate, to agonize, and to wait for a more favorable turn of events that may never come or more compelling external pressures that may as well be wrong as right, is itself a decision of sorts and a weak and potentially dangerous course for a President to follow. I have promised to uphold the Constitution, to do what is right as God gives me to see the right, and to do the very best that I can for America.

Sa plusy dodatnie i plusy ujemne

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray:

Sure you have made me passing glad That you your mind so soon removed, Before that I the leisure had To choose you for my best beloved

Do - don't stew.