Quotes About Decisions

Mom had always taught all of us to examine decisions by reversibility—that is, to hedge our bets. When you couldn't decide between two things, she suggested you choose the one that allowed you to change course if necessary. Not the road less traveled but the road with the exit ramp.

Mom had always taught all of us to examine decisions by reversibility—that is, to hedge our bets. When you couldn't decide between two things, she suggested you choose the one that allowed you to change course if necessary.

Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them.

Some things are up to us and some are not up to us.

In short, she (Seraphina) had luck and judgment, but no morals.

For the first time in his life he realized that sometimes in life you go through doors that only open one way. You can stand before them and think about whether you want to go through them or not. But when you do and the door closes behind you there is no way to go back. The door is featureless and unknobbed and smooth as a sheet of glass. You can pound on it and claw till your fingers are bleeding, scream until your throat is raw, but no one will open the door, no one will even hear you.

S]ometimes in life you go through doors that only open one way. You can stand before them and think about whether you want to go through them or not. But when you do and the door closes behind you there is no way to go back. The door is featureless and unknobbed and smooth as a sheet of glass. You can pound on it and claw till your fingers are bleeding, scream until your throat is raw, but no one will open the door, no one will even hear you.

a timid reverence for the decisions of our ancestors, as if it were the nature of the mind always too degenerate and never to advance.

As Kahn put it, the secret of investing could be expressed in one word: "safety." And the key to making intelligent investment decisions was always to begin by asking, "How much can I lose?

Where defining foreign policy as 'ethical' went wrong was that it implied that all decisions would be exclusive in every respect of any dealings with unethical regimes.

We often repent the good we have done as well as the ill.

and line of cases. Justice Byron R. "Whizzer" White, a JFK appointee, dissented, calling Doe an act of "raw judicial power," as it took these decisions from the states and enshrined their determination in the Supreme Court's reasoning.

Judges are not final because they are infallible, but they are infallible only because they are final.

That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.

People who grow up without a sense of how yesterday has affected today are unlikely to have a strong sense of how today affects tomorrow. They are unlikely to understand in a bone-deep way how the decisions they make now will shape and affect their future.

And, Jake, there's going to be lots in this world you're going to feel bad about. Save your regret for the important things, okay?

Every life lived fully is going to have some regrets, because every risk is not worth taking, but you don't always see that in time. Or if you do, you convince yourself that you'll be the one to beat the odds.

If Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist wasn't addicted to the pain-killing drug his doctor prescribed, but instead it was just that the drug had 'established an interrelationship with the body, such that if the drug is removed precipitously, there is a reaction,' you needn't question that his decisions might have been influenced by his drug addiction.

The great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes, a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it; or of the lips, though they cannot speak.

When anything and everything goes, there are no real values, no definite right and wrong.

It was easier to come to maturity when there were more well-defined philosophical options.

Modern society has created a giant apparatus for the cultivation of the hard skills, while failing to develop the moral and emotional faculties down below. Children are coached on how to jump through a thousand scholastic hoops. Yet by far the most important decisions they will make are about whom to marry and whom to befriend, what to love and what to despise, and how to control impulses. On these matters, they are almost entirely on their own.

that your are the prime driver of your life. The world is malleable enough to be shaped by you. To lead a better life you just have to work harder, or use more willpower, or make better decisions.

Accounting is your primary information system for making decisions, so if that information is bad, your decisions will be bad too.