Quotes About Decision-making

Learn to say no to the good so you can say yes to the best.

Learn to say 'no' to the good so you can say 'yes' to the best.

To Stay Focused in Life: You can't know everyone You can't do everything You can't go everywhere We have to pick and choose between good and a little bit better.

Why is Old Jack a better general than Moses?" was the question they liked to ask. "Because it took Moses forty years to lead the Israelites through the wilderness," the answer went, "and Old Jack would have double-quicked them through in three days."10

Apparently these new rulers of the world did not indulge in any drinking or smoking to soften their moods when they met, which Menelaus knew to be a big mistake. The Congress of the United States, back before the Disunion, always met sober, and look at what had come of that.

Economics, when you strip away the guff and the mathematical sophistry, is largely about incentives.

Because, as we all know, it's easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it's also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we're not so sure about.

there is something unforgettably compelling about having actually been there, alone, at two in the morning, gloved, masked, and robed like a latex-covered priest, receiving into my hands a blue, bloody, and lifeless baby and having to decide.

Advocacy means persuading people who matter to care about your issue. It is about getting listened to, being at the table when decisions are made, being heard by people who make decisions. It is about facing and overcoming resistance. It is about speaking and writing in compelling ways that make decision makers want to adopt your ideas.

Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable," President Obama explained to the author Michael Lewis. "Otherwise, someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities. ... You can't be paralyzed by the fact that it might not work out." Thomas Jefferson explained this to his secretary of the treasury: "What is good in this case cannot be effected. We have, therefore, only to find out what will be least bad.

At least half of my life's many mistakes can be safely put down to impetuosity: the other half derive from inertia.

We miss a lot in life because we don't know when to quit, what to leave out.

No longer is someone coming to hire you, to invest in your company, to sign you, to pick you. It's on you to make the most important decision in your life: Choose Yourself!

At the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.

Addiction is not a fact of life but a description about how we are choosing to live.

I listen to too many people. I'm only going to listen to my gut for the rest of my life.

Once comics become your life, you have to make decisions on what you spend your time on.

Americans have not only a right but a responsibility to consider the values of those who seek to lead them - whether they arise from life experience, political ideology or religious belief.

We are all, right now, living the life we choose.

Most of the major mistakes I made in my life, I made when I was too tired to know what I was doing - both personally and professionally.

I'll take any life in which I can make choices and have agency, and America is not a bad place for all that.

In life, you don't have a level of confrontation and the nonsense you run into when you're a CEO. CEOs aren't born.

I guess we guess our way through life. How many times do we really know for sure?

I fail all the time, but we are all just human and imperfect, but you know what's best for you, so follow your gut. That's probably my biggest life lesson, follow your gut.