Quotes About Decision-making

As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us.

Owl," said Rabbit shortly, "you and I have brains. The others have fluff. If there is any thinking to be done in this Forest--and when I say thinking I mean thinking--you and I must do it.

There is nothing more disastrous than a committee of extremely able men.

Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow. Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done.

Most people wander through life, carelessly taking whatever risk crosses their paths without compensation, but never consciously accepting extra risk to pick up the money and other good things lying all around them.

Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions. "He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters

The most effective way to revive a functional democracy is to do what we have always done; transfer decision-making from the unaccountable institutions: monarchs, priestly castes, military juntas, political or economic dictatorships, or modern corporations, and bring it back to the public arena.

You can always count on the American people to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities.

The more alternatives, the more difficult the choice.

To decide, to be at the level of choice, is to take responsibility for your life and to be in control of your life.

By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb.

I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that "it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams."

If General McClellan did not want to use the army, he would like to borrow it.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

The love of property and consciousness of right and wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often makes a man's course seem crooked, his conduct a riddle.

My father, for whose skills as a surgeon I have the deepest respect, says, "The operation with the best outcome is the one you decide not to do." Knowing when not to operate, knowing when I am in over my head, knowing when to call for the assistance of a surgeon of my father's caliber--that kind of talent, that kind of "brilliance," goes unheralded.

A]s military history reveals, a bad plan is often better than no plan, especially if the people on the other side think it's a good plan.

Rather than looking outward in an attempt to predict the outcome, you turn inward to your identity. You base the decision on who you are--or who you want to be.

Minority viewpoints are important, not because they tend to prevail but because they stimulate divergent attention and thought, " finds Berkeley psychologist Charlan Nemeth, one of the world's leading experts on group decisions. "As a result, even when they are wrong they contribute to the detection of novel solutions and decisions that, on balance, are qualitatively better". Dissenting opinions are useful even when they're wrong.

Our companies, communities, and countries don't necessarily suffer from a shortage of novel ideas. They're constrained by a shortage of people who excel at choosing the right novel ideas.

Steve Jobs was famous for making big bets based on intuition rather than systematic analysis.

The more reasons we put on the table, the easier it is for people to discard the shakiest one. Once they reject one of our justifications, they can easily dismiss our entire case. That happened regularly to the average negotiators: they brought too many different weapons to battle. They lost ground not because of the strength of their most compelling point, but because of the weakness of their least compelling one.

We are all Rumsfeldian, if we are doing science right.

Keep in mind that whenever you are in a crisis, you are in the midst of danger as well as opportunity.