Quotes About Decision-making

It was a leader's job to project a calm mastery of the situation, while also encouraging subordinates to develop decision-making skills. Assuming that they made the right decisions. A leader's job was a crock of shit.

When a man assumes leadership, he forfeits the right to mercy.

We are all born with the ability to make our own choices. But once you make the wrong choice, other people make your decisions for you. 18.

Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.

Adding a new line of business to an existing portfolio creates a crisis of prioritization. Such

The only suitable reference for an early majority customer, it turns out, is another member of the early majority, but no upstanding member of the early majority will buy without first having consulted with several suitable references.

To have some idea what it's like, stand in the outside lane of a motorway, get your mate to drive his car at you at 95 mph and wait until he's 12 yards away, before you decide which way to jump.

Churchill that he had a great many military ideas, most of them likewise bad.

The people are that part of the state that does now know what it wants.

Ganging up on a short-range interest isn't the same thing as killing it.

Indecision and delays are the parents of failure.

Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary.

The worst president is closer by nature to the best then either is to anyone who has not gone through what it requires to become president.

Recent presidents have gone off on ad hoc adventures. They have set unattainable goal because they have framed the issue incorrectly, as they believed their own rhetoric.

never go into the Council room without a plan. You have to give them a range of possibilities, but if they discuss them too much, they'll never make a decision. Steer them toward the right choice and don't let them derail the train.

He shook his head. "Better to do a small wrong to prevent a big one." "How do you decide what is a 'small' wrong? Let's say, you buy the safety of many with the life of a child. That child means everything to her parents. You devastated them. There is no greater wrong you can

He shook his head. "Better to do a small wrong to prevent a big one." "How do you decide what is a 'small' wrong? Let's say, you buy the safety of many with the life of a child. That child means everything to her parents. You devastated them. There is no greater wrong you can do to them. Why would that be a 'small' evil?

Inexperienced in the course of world affairs and incapable of being prepared for all the chances that happen in it, I ask myself only 'Can you also will that your maxim should become a universal law?' Where you cannot it is to be rejected...

Under a nonrepublican constitution, where subjects are not citizens, the easiest thing in the world to do is to declare war. Here the ruler is not a fellow citizen, but the nation's owner, and war does not affect his table, his hunt, his places of pleasure, his court festivals, and so on. Thus, he can decide to go to war for the most meaningless of reasons, as if it were a kind of pleasure party...

T]o be unfaithful to my maxim of prudence may often be very advantageous to me, although to abide by it is certainly safer.

Estaba loca. Era una mujer de veinte años y había actuado como una niña de doce. <>

Decide what you want and go for it, Fred, it's just a matter of will power! I remember you saying that to me more than once.' I did not recall saying this nor did it sound like anything which anyone would say more than once, assuming he had ever had the misfortune to say it at all, but I was glad that Freddie had such rosy memories.

We ignore what we are doing until it is too late to alter it. We never allow ourselves quite to focus upon moments of decision; and these are often in fact hard to find even if we are searching for them.

You say we don't know the consequences of actions. But we don't know the consequences of inactions either, and inactions are actions.