Quotes About Decision-making

I'm not one of those men who submit to uneasiness and worry without having the force of character to face them. "I must think it over, come to a decision, and put it out of my mind," he said aloud.

When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two possible courses of action was the better and which was the worse, and as soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it.

But a commander in chief, especially at a difficult moment, has always before him not one proposal but dozens simultaneously. And all these proposals, based on strategics and tactics,

She said to herself: "No, just now I can't think of it, later on, when I am calmer." But this calm for thought never came; every time the thought rose of what she had done and what would happen to her, and what she ought to do, a horror came over her and she drove those thoughts away. "Later, later," she said—"when I am calmer.

To go, or not to go?' he asked himself; and his inner consciousness answered that he ought not to go: that it could only result in hypocrisy; that it was impossible to restore their relations because it was impossible to render her attractive and capable of exciting love, or to turn him into an old man incapable of love. Nothing except hypocrisy and falsehood could now result—and these were repugnant to his nature.

There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.

Lincoln's significance lies in his not hesitating before the most severe means, once they were found to be necessary, in achieving a great historic aim posed by the development of a young nation.

I suffer from the Virgo disease: nothing I did was pure enough. I was never sure whether I wanted disciples or partisans. I was never sure if I wanted Parliament or a hermitage.

We believe that when we choose anything, judge a stranger and even fall in love, we understand the principal factors that influenced us. Very often nothing could be further from the truth. As a result, many of our most basic assumptions about ourselves, and society, are false.

The means of many out way the means of the few or one.

In any compromise between food and poison," Ayn Rand writes, "it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

If a man want cook, he hire one, nah? Or do it himself, if he have a mind.

Fear has never helped anybody make good choices. It leads to clinging when we should be walking.

The rush of sexual attraction can act like a drug and blur our capacity for clear thinking. This can lead us to distance ourselves from our friends or even abandon our life plan for someone who couldn't otherwise be relied on to water our plants and feed our cat.

Lawyers rarely test their power, or the power they promote, against this simple pragmatic question: "Will it do good?" When challenged about the expanding reach of the law, the lawyer answers, "Why not?"

There is no monument dedicated to the memory of a committee.

We spend our days in deliberating, and we end them without coming to any resolve.

In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone's just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself. And even after you've figured it out and done it, you'll never know whether you were right or wrong. You'll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things might have gone better if you hadn't.

It's true," Eliot said. "Statistically, historically, and however else you want to look at it, you are almost never right. A monkey making life decisions based on its horoscope in USA Today would be right more often than you. But in this case, yes, you were right. Don't spoil it.

A Fillory without a god. It was a radical notion. But he thought about it, and it didn't seem like a terrible one. They would be on their own this time - the kings, the queens, the people, the animals, the spirits, the monsters. They'd have to decide what was right and just and fair for themselves.

You can't just decide to be happy." "No, you can't. But you can sure as hell decide to be miserable.

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There's not one of them which won't make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide.

Regret is a bitter emotion, so painful that the urge to avoid it often drives decision-making strategies.

You know, I'm not saying, 'Oh, because I play a good guy on TV, I need to suddenly be villainous in a movie.' I look at it more like: does this role has a kind of urgency for me in terms of, 'Can I not say no to it for whatever reason?'