Quotes About Decision-making

Governing is not a hero's profession. It is a profession of compromises.

They made strategy at 33,000 feet (on) the campaign plane.

The main character in Nixonland is not Richard Nixon. Its protagonist, in fact, has no name--but lives on every page. It is the voter who, in 1964, pulled the lever for the Democrat for president because to do anything else, at least that particular Tuesday in November, seemed to court civilizational chaos, and who, eight years later, pulled the lever for the Republican for exactly the same reason.

A good shooter taking a great shot is better than a great shooter taking a bad one.

If I had a gun with two bullets and I was in a room with Hitler, Bin Laden, and Toby, I would shoot Toby twice.

When I do things I shouldn't do, my mother says I need a new pair of glasses -- that I should be be looking differently at the choices I make.

the ratio of assumptions you have to make relative to knowledge that you possess is high—a different set of disciplines needs to be employed.

A more effective approach in uncertain environments is to allow resources to be invested only when uncertainty is reduced, a core principle of options reasoning.

Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.

I want to have children, but my friends scare me. One of my friends told me she was in labor for thirty-six hours. I don't even want to do anything that feels good for thirty-six hours.

Leaders typically don't follow the crowd, that is unless they're trying to escape a burning building.

Don't spend a week prepping for meetings; spend an hour and then go talk to people. Anything more is stalling. Don't spend months doing full-time customer conversations before beginning to move on a product. Spend a week, maybe two. Get your bearings and then give them something to commit to.

Decisions are now made by one individual, rather than by a committee. He no longer has to mind read, predict, or try to please multiple voices with conflicting agendas. When putting himself first all the information he needs to make a decision is within him: "Is this what I want? Yes. Then that's what I'll do.

What do I think is right?" or uses the committee method, he will always be out of integrity. If he asks himself what he believes is right but doesn't do it, he is also out of integrity. Only by asking himself what he believes is right and then doing it does he become a man of integrity.

To get anywhere, or even live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.

There are no victims, only volunteers.

Based upon the tournament results and the formal propositions, four simple suggestions are offered for individual choice: do not be envious of the other player's success; do not be the first to defect; reciprocate both cooperation and defection; and do not be too clever.

When the players will never meet again, the strategy of defection is the only stable strategy.

In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct.

our typical reaction to scarcity hinders our ability to think.

Without question, when people are uncertain, they are more likely to use others' actions to decide how they themselves should act.

we all fool ourselves from time to time in order to keep our thoughts and beliefs consistent with what we have already done or decided.

Once again we can see that social proof is most powerful for those who feel unfamiliar or unsure in a specific situation and who, consequently, must look outside of themselves for evidence of how best to behave there.

Psychologists have long understood the power of the consistency principle to direct human action.