Decision Quotes

My decision to be a scientist was a bit of a drift really, more or less by default.

Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.

Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward.

We like to think that our parents made a decision to bring us into the world.

When my colleagues went to endorse Rob Garagiola, nobody asked me for my opinion about that. And I didn't ask anybody else. I did what I thought was the right thing to do, and I made a decision, just like they did.

The National Academy of Sciences would be unable to give a unanimous decision if asked whether the sun would rise tomorrow.

For the rich, it's not about getting more stuff. It's about having the freedom to make almost any decision you want.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who, at the dawn of decision, sat down to wait, and waiting died.

The decision of such judges as Claudius and his Senate is worth very little in the question of a man's innocence or guilt; but the sentence was that Seneca should be banished to the island of Corsica.

The key to making the inspections work is the Iraqi government making the crucial decision that because of the international pressure Iraq has to disarm itself.

My office has a view of low-cost housing, old East German prefabricated apartment buildings. It isn't an attractive view, but it's very helpful, because it reminds me to ask myself, whenever there is a decision to be made, whether the people who live there can afford our decisions.

People don't realize what a brilliant politician Lincoln was. Looking back, we want to ascribe a level of providence to his every decision but he was a cunning and calculating politician; from the cultivation of his image as a hayseed from Illinois, to his ability to keep this country together under dire circumstances.

I have heard your views. They do not harmonize with mine. The decision is taken unanimously.

I consider Bush's decision to call for a war against terrorism a serious mistake. He is elevating these criminals to the status of war enemies, and one cannot lead a war against a network if the term war is to retain any definite meaning.

I made a decision when I was in school that I'd have a lot of male friends.

Before I proposed to my now-wife, I was understandably nervous. My father suggested that I take stock of all of my experiences and relationships with women, from my earliest memories to present day, and see if I had learned anything that might inform my decision.

Follow your heart and make it your decision.

The myths have always condemned those who 'looked back.' Condemned them, whatever the paradise may have been which they were leaving. Hence this shadow over each departure from your decision.

Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.

I always go back to Harry Truman: Should we drop an atomic bomb to save 100,000 lives? That's a hell of a decision to make. Did he make that decision by himself? No, he had advisers.

You get in trouble, you have to evaluate: Is it worth getting into trouble again? It's a lot easier to make that decision when you have a career at stake.

Another factor is the decision, made in 1976, to sharply divide the FBI and the foreign intelligence agencies. The FBI would collect within the United States; the foreign intelligence agencies would collect overseas.

Conduct, which involves a decision of the ultimate fate of the agent cannot be based on illusions.

My answer to those who oppose my appointment as CEO is that this is really a decision of the YWCA. They want to strengthen their grassroots to advocate on behalf of women's and children's empowerment and ending racism.

'Yield' was completed in 1997 and released in 1998. In the spring of 1997, I had made a decision to stop taking medications that I had been taking daily since 1988.

In the final analysis, it is your decision to make, but it doesn't move as fast as I'd like it to move.

The president's decision yesterday to set into motion the development of the hydrogen bomb... has placed us on the knife-edge of history.

There is a moment when you get older when your metabolism slows down and you don't feel like working out any more, so you don't want to keep yourself fit any more, but that's your decision. Why should you be judged for it?

First of all, when I was making the decision, I never thought that Pittsburgh fans would want me back. Every time I played there, they were booing me every time I touched the puck. I didn't think it would be such a big deal that I didn't sign with Pittsburgh.

Why is it that our young kids all across America can solve the most complex problems in a video game involving executive decision making and analytical thinking, yet we accept the fact that they can't add or read?

When you make a decision to forgive it's a decision that you have to make intellectually.

Of course, if this season turns out to be terrible for me - if I get injured again and this prevents me from reaching a satisfying level, then I could change my decision again. But at this moment, it absolutely feels like the right thing for me to continue through 2003.

Understand that sexuality is as wide as the sea. Understand that your morality is not law. Understand that we are you. Understand that if we decide to have sex whether safe, safer, or unsafe, it is our decision and you have no rights in our lovemaking.

It took me a long time to reach the decision to retire, actually, from the Art Ensemble.

Everything in my career is my decision - every picture, every outfit. You get one chance at this, and I never saw myself as being a puppet.

When you make a decision, you need facts. If those facts are in your brain, they're at your fingertips. If they're all in Google somewhere, you may not make the right decision on the spur of the moment.

Think 100 times before you take a decision, But once that decision is taken, stand by it as one man.

Under our Constitution, military leaders have no choice but to endorse the president's decision after giving him their best advice.

Because of new technologies, new wealth, new conditions of domestic life and of international relations, unprecedented criteria and issues are coming up for national decision.

The effort invested in 'getting it right' should be commensurate with the importance of the decision.

My interest in well-being evolved from my interest in decision making - from raising the question of whether people know what they will want in the future and whether the things that people want for themselves will make them happy.

When you talk about aiding this country against that country or about fighting terrorism, when you actually take that decision and strip it down, it always comes down to one person in the field giving specialized training to somebody else in the field.

The culmination of all of that was the decision to start a company, which became Lotus, to do a product, which became 1-2-3. By the time I reached that point it had been four years, and it felt like a lifetime, but really it was kind of evolutionary.

I may play some exhibition games so I don't want to quit the game of chess completely. I just decided and it's a firm decision not to play competitive chess anymore.

If you make a decision to fight for future of your own country you have to consider all the consequences.

My job is to provide the president with the richest possible consideration, so that he knows what is at stake in whatever decision he makes.

It's just a logical guess that they are very very wise to put someone from the old series in it, and if you had to choose, it would be a very difficult decision.

What's called a difficult decision is a difficult decision because either way you go there are penalties.

That decision, for me, was almost certainly definitely wrong.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

Most men, I am convinced, have an unmistakable feeling at the final moment of significant choice that they are making a free decision, that they can really decide which one of two or more roads to follow.

Not reforming the NHS would have been a much easier decision for me as secretary of state to have taken. We could have just protected the NHS from cuts, put in an extra £12.5bn and left it there. But sooner or later the cracks would have started to show. New treatments would have been held back.

But the rule seems to be that the bigger and more life-changing the decision, the less it will seem like a decision at all.

Do you want to be an actor, or do you want to be a celebrity? I made that decision when I went to Juilliard. I wanted to be an actor. So, if I get the opportunity to be an actor and do some cool, fun and interesting projects, I'm going to do that.

I probably made a few pictures I shouldn't have done, but I have four sons and I have to pay the rent. If you have a decision to make about whether or not you can buy groceries at the market or whether or not you're going to make a bad movie, you're going to make a bad movie.

With respect to Holy Communion, it is up to the communicant to decide whether they are in a state of grace and worthy to receive the Eucharist. Each one of us makes that decision.

The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

Being on a Paul Thomas Anderson film, the best decision an actor can make is to listen to Paul Thomas Anderson. Because he's probably not going to steer anyone in the wrong direction. I would always say go with your gut on any other movie set, but with Paul, I would say go with Paul's gut.

I'll make the right decision, whichever one it is. I have to be 100 percent, not 95 or 99.

It was a big decision to leave the system because many people said I would fail.

He who can not support himself, can not take his own decision.

What I would pay much more attention to are the few points where the player can inadvertently make a career decision. Most players end up back-tracking, though some actually enjoy this.

Heroes always make the right decision; I find that seldom happens in my life.

At a time when we are dealing with unpredictable suppliers of energy abroad and higher gas costs at home, the decision to increase domestic energy exploration is integral to a balanced, common sense energy policy.

It was a decision to work clean. I just prefer to work that way. I have no problem with comedians who don't work that way. There was a temptation in the early '70s to reconsider. I decided against it.

I made a conscious decision that I was not going to have children. I didn't want others raising them, and looking after them myself would get in the way of being a musician and writer.

My own view is that taping of conversations for historical purposes was a bad decision on the part of all the presidents. I don't think Kennedy should have done it. I don't think Johnson should have done it, and I don't think we should have done it.

I don't know how a judge can concentrate on being fair and impartial when he or she is faced with possible jail time for making a decision that others deem incorrect.

The best decision I ever made was to become a priest and I think the second best was to resign.

I'm a Hawaiian shirt guy. I've made that life decision.

Voting to go on strike is not a decision working people take lightly and is always accompanied by a strong sense of injustice at work. The impact of losing a day's pay is significant, not least for those in the lowest paid jobs who are already on the tightest budgets.

Every Olympic athlete prepares differently. For me, I am 100 percent into the sport. And if I decide to really make a crucial career decision to say, 'This is something I want to do,' I want to leave no stone unturned in my preparation.

The decision for me was whether to have 'The Father' be a book that told a story - from the point of view of this speaker, the daughter - without, as in the earlier books, then having a section on something else and a section on something else.

I made the decision to take acting seriously after high school.

The decision that has to be made was whether it was material, whether he knew he was lying under oath, whether he did it willfully. I think that's required of any prosecutor who is charged with an investigation of this.