Quotes About Decision-making

Coveting power for power's sake was a "base" pursuit, he wrote, adding, "But power in a national crisis, when a man believes he knows what orders should be given, is a blessing.

memorandum to the State Department dated October 26, 1933. Seriously ill patients could ask to be euthanized, but if unable to make the request, their families could do so for them.

Churchill did not and frankly could not manage the staggering pressure of directing the war by himself. He relied heavily on others, even if sometimes these others merely served as an audience on whom he could test his thoughts and plans.

It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.

We noted that the ego delays responses in order to permit a richer reaction: it allows the organism to choose between several alternatives, reviewed in awareness in lieu of immediate action.

Naively, one may suppose those at the Top who take decisions are poly­mathic supermen, somehow qualified to assess the many-sided implications of their decisions. Acquaintance with any of them dispels such illusions.

Remember everything is right until it's wrong. You'll know when it's wrong.

Remember, everything is right until it's wrong. You'll know when it's wrong." - "You think so?" - "I'm quite sure. If you don't it doesn't matter. Nothing will matter then

Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault.

When there's no clear option, it's better to do nothing.

But courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility.

Now, to me, this was a very interesting story. It was a reminder that you should never let yourself get swept away by the crowd. Sometimes everyone you know can be saying something or believing something and it can just be dead wrong. All around you there might be people getting all excited or panicked and yelling for you to do the

My hope, as always, was that someone else would make the decision for me, absolve me of the little responsibility I had.

Don't look back. Go to the car and don't look back." "Looking back is all I've got," he said.

Trust the people' occasionally had to be tempered by common sense.

could not accept a position of general responsibility for war policy without an effective share in its guidance and control

when an MP told him that the public demanded all-out bombing of German civilians, especially in Berlin, Churchill replied, 'My dear sir, this is a military and not a civilian war. You and others may desire to kill women and children. We desire (and have succeeded in our desire) to destroy German military objectives. I quite appreciate your point. But my motto is "Business before pleasure.

set up to study the tactics and equipment required to defeat Japan, even recommended the use of mustard and phosgene gas against underground enemy positions, and was supported in this by Army Chief of Staff George Marshall and Supreme Commander General Douglas MacArthur, but it was vetoed by President Roosevelt.

The temptation to tell a chief in a great position the things he most likes to hear is one of the commonest explanations of mistaken policy,' he later wrote in The World Crisis; 'the outlook of the leader on whose decisions fateful events depend is usually far more sanguine than the brutal facts admit.'45

Vanniv put a hand over his chest. "I don't know what you're implying, madam professor, but I have a strict 'no attacking cities' policy.

The art of management lies in the capacity to select from the many activities of seemingly comparable significance the one or two or three that provide leverage well beyond the others and concentrate on them.

can think of no better way to make the decision-making process straightforward than to apply before the fact the structure imposed by our six questions.

information-gathering is the basis of all other managerial work, which is why I choose to spend so much of my day doing it.

a strong and positive corporate culture is absolutely essential if dual reporting and decision-making by peers are to work.