Quotes About Decision-making

If these rulers would only get the right advice from the right advisers, the thinking goes, prosperity would follow.

While Bigge was trying to turn back the clock, ex-convicts and their sons and daughters were demanding greater rights. Most important, they realized, again just as in the United States, that to consolidate their economic and political rights fully they needed political institutions that would include them in the process of decision making. They demanded elections in which they could participate as equals and representative institutions and assemblies in which they could hold office. The

what rules society ends up with is determined by politics: who has power and how this power can be exercised.

los países pobres lo son porque quienes tienen el poder toman decisiones que crean pobreza. No lo hacen bien, no porque se equivoquen o por su ignorancia, sino a propósito.

Solamente cuando muchos individuos y grupos tienen voz en las decisiones y el poder político para sentarse en la mesa, empieza a tener sentido la idea de que todos deben ser tratados con justicia.

Poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose. To understand this, you have to go beyond economics and expert advice on the best thing to do and, instead, study how decisions actually get made, who gets to make them, and why those people decide to do what they do. This is the study of politics and political processes.

La política es el proceso mediante el cual una sociedad elige las reglas que la gobernarán

Indecision is the source of chaos

You're young, Darren, Kurda said. It's crazy to throw your life away. Leave Vampire Mountain. Make a fresh start. You're experienced enough to survive on your own. You don't need Larten to look after you anymore. Lots of vampires lead their own lives, having nothing to do with the rest of us. Be your own person. Don't let the foolish pride of others cloud your judgment.

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base.

But when friends would ask Kathy whether they, too, should start their own business, she talked them out of it. You don't run the business, she would say. The business runs you.

Apparently some on on the Bad Guys' side had balled up this animal named Larry, and had thrown him at Max's team. Max couldn't decide whether he should band the use of animal projectiles or not. But before he could make a decision and as Larry began to scurry off dizzily, Carol grabbed him, balled him up again, and hurled him back. There was a shriek from the Bad Guys' camp. Larry, you traitor!

Classical liberalism doesn't demand that you bow to it. It instructs you to make a decision for yourself. Then, through that process, we can figure out what is best for a society at large.

But if you don't decide what needs to be done about your secretary's birthday, because it's "not that important" right now, that open loop will take up energy and prevent you from having a totally effective, clear focus on what is important.

That said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with creating a quick, informal, short list of "if I have time, I'd really like to . . ." kinds of things, picked from your Next Actions inventory.

It is better to be wrong than to be vague. —Freeman Dyson

The trick is to ensure not so much that what you are doing is, for you, the right thing, all the time (how, ultimately, could you know that for sure?) but that you are firmly in the driver's seat with a functioning process for discovering and engaging with your best choice.

Throw away, shred, or recycle anything that has no potential future action or reference value.

The substantive issue is how to make appropriate choices about what to do at any point in time. The real work is to manage our actions. That

your vision, what did your mind naturally begin doing? What did it start to think about? "What time should we go?" "Is it open tonight?" "Will it be crowded?" "What's the weather like?" "Should we change clothes?" "Is there gas in the car?" "How hungry are we?" That was brainstorming.

you don't manage priorities—you have them.

it is championing appropriate engagement with your world—guiding you to make the best choice of what to do in each moment, and to eliminate distraction and stress about what you're not doing.

Creating "ABC" priority codes and daily "to-do" lists were key techniques developed to help people sort through their choices in some meaningful way.

If you had the freedom to decide what to do, you also had the responsibility to make good choices, given your priorities. What