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Quotes about decisions

36 quotes from 34 people

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The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead.
George S. Patton1885–1945
- Fear
When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I’ll like it or not. Disagreement, at this stage, stimulates me. But once a decision has been made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own.
Colin Powell1937–2021
Ever notice that ‘what the hell’ is always the right decision?
Marilyn Monroe1926–1962
- Risk
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.
Theodore Roosevelt1858–1919
Decisions are made by those who show up.
Aaron Sorkinborn 1961Commencement speech at Syracuse University on May 13, 2012.
Every great decision creates ripples⁠—like a huge boulder dropped in a lake. The ripples merge, rebound off the banks in unforseeable ways. The heavier the decision, the larger the waves, the more uncertain the consequences.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881
It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, that we make our irrevocable decisions.
Marcel Proust1871–1922Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919), Ch. I: “Madame Swann at Home”
There is no mistake; there has been no mistake; and there shall be no mistake.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington1769–1852Reply to William Huskisson, who said his letter offering to resign had been a mistake
When conflicted between two choices, take neither.
Nassim Nicholas Talebborn 1960The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 71
Decide, v.i. To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over another set.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
- Comedy
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
T. S. Eliot1888–1965The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), Line 79In context
- Courage
Besides, I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more honourable than not to judge at all.
Henry James1843–1916The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Ch. XVI
- Honor
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
Laurence J. Peter1919–1990Entry for September 24; as quoted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, , p. 78
- Intelligence
There is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice, because all you have staked will be lost if you look back. Life’s point of no return.
Dag Hammarskjöld1905–1961Vägmärken · Markings (1963), 1951
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
Steve Jobs1955–2011Address at Stanford University (2005)
- Life & Death