Quotes About Decision

Withholding a decision is a decision.

No point in getting emotional about anything. Being emotional didn't help with survival. What mattered was to learn everything, analyze the situation, choose a course of action, and then move boldly. Know, think, choose, do. There was no place in that list for feel. Not that Bean didn't have feelings. He simply refused to think about them or dwell on them or let them influence his decisions, when anything important was at stake.

When it comes down to it, though, the real decision is inevitable: If one of us has to be destroyed, let's make damn sure we're the ones alive at the end.

If I wanted to doubt, then I could doubt endlessly ... but at some point a person has to stop questioning and act, and at that point you have to trust something to be true. You have to act as if something is true, and so you choose the thing you have the most reason to believe in, you have to live in the world that you have the most hope in. I follow [God], I believe [God], because I want to live in the world that [God] has shown me.

When there aren't any smart decisions, I suppose you just have to pick the stupid decision you like best.

There is no harder job than parenting. There is no human relationship with such potential for great achievement and awful destructiveness, and despite all the experts who write about it, no one has the slightest idea whether any decision will be right or best or even not-horrible for any particular child. It is a job that simply cannot be done right.

So that's it? asked the expendable. Final decision, said Ram. And it's the right one. Why do you think so? Because we live or die, we'll learn something important from jumping into the fold. Thousands of future travelers will either follow us or not. But if we don't make the jump, we'll learn nothing, have no new options. A lovely speech. It has been sent back to Earth. It will inspire millions. Shut up, said Ram.

And what? What's the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say: Tut-tut, what at botch that was? Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll chose as we think they should?

Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never decide to cease to exist.

So this is love, he said to himself, trying to examine his own overwhelming feelings with the rational fragment of his mind. This is the powerful, horrible longing that made Mother marry that miserable tyrant I had to call Father. How many unbelievably stupid heroes in stories did insanely dangerous things because they were in love? More to the pint, how many insane things am I going to do because of it?

Just because your former understanding of the purpose of your life is contradicted doesn't mean that you have to decide there is no purpose.

I am a Gordian knot. Don't unravel, just slice.

You don't know what would have happened if I hadn't pushed. Nobody knows. I did it the way I did it, and it worked. Above all, it worked.

If you wait until you know everything, you never do anything.

We've decided that your birthday present will be a car, said Marion. Danny was touched. But the thing I can't figure out is, why would I need a new car? You can't very well gate a girl to the movies, Danny, Leslie replied. I think you're overlooking the biggest point here, said Danny. I don't need a CAR so I can date. I need a GIRL.

What kind of rescue is this, where you toss the prisoner a knife and stand and wait to see what happens?

He did what he thought was right

No point in getting emotional about anything. Being emotional didn't help with survival. What mattered was to learn everything, analyze the situation, choose a course of action, and then move boldly. Know, think, choose, do.

He knew he could always be smart later, if that turned out to be a better strategy. But once you admitted to being smart, there was no going back.

Even gentle people recognize that sometimes the decision not to kill is a decision to die.

No point in getting emotional about anything. Being emotional didn't help with survival. What mattered was to learn everything, analyze the situation, choose a course of action, and then move boldly. Know, think, choose, do. There was no place in that list for "feel.

The world is always a democracy in times of flux, and the man with the best voice will win.

This would not have a happy ending. So Ender decided that he'd rather not be the unhappiest at the end.

What I understand now is this: There is no harder job than parenting. There is no human relationship with such potential for great achievement and awful destructiveness, and despite all the experts who write about it, no one has the slightest idea whether any decision will be right or best or even not-horrible for any particular child. It is a job that simply cannot be done right.