Decision Making Quotes
Most popular decision-making quotes
People don't ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.
Decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.
Our snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled.
The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.
When should we trust our instincts, and when should we consciously think things through? Well, here is a partial answer. On straightforward choices, deliberate analysis is best. When questions of analysis and personal choice start to get complicated—when we have to juggle many different variables—then our unconscious thought processes may be superior.
When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature.
As I observed more than once at Facebook, and as I imagine is the case in all organizations from business to government, high-level decisions that affected thousands of people and billions in revenue would be made on gut feel, the residue of whatever historical politics were in play, and the ability to cater persuasive messages to people either busy, impatient, or uninterested (or all three).
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.
It's better to be boldly decisive and risk being wrong than to agonize at length and be right too late.
Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clean and straight. Indecision is a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind.
My idea of a group decision is to look in the mirror.
Life is made up of a series of judgments on insufficient data, and if we waited to run down all our doubts, it would flow past us.
The most decisive actions of our life – I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future – are, more often than not, unconsidered.
All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.
Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader. Don't fall victim to what I call the 'ready-aim-aim-aim-aim syndrome'. You must be willing to fire.
Soon after a hard decision something inevitably occurs to cast doubt. Holding steady against that doubt usually proves that decision.
Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader. Don't fall victim to what I call the 'ready – aim – aim – aim – aim syndrome.' You must be willing to fire.
Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clean and straight; indecision, a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it.
At the last moment there is always a reason not existing before—namely, the impossibility of further vacillation.
The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Equivocation is half-way to lying, and lying the whole way to hell.
If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.
He would come in and say he changed his mind — which was a gilded figure of speech, because he didn't have any.
A decision is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.
We'll jump off that bridge when we come to it.
When you do say yes, say it quickly. But always take a half hour to say no, so you can understand the other fellow's side too.
When a person tells you "I'll let you know"—-you know.
Sir Stafford has a brilliant mind until it is made up.
His indecision is final.
When a fool has made up his mind, the market has gone by.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL TIP Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, and you're hampered by not having any, the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, is simply by spinning a penny. No — not so that chance shall decide the affair while you're passively standing there moping; but the moment the penny is up in the air, you suddenly know what you're hoping.
When a decision has been made and the die is cast, then murder the alternatives.
If decisions were a choice between alternatives, decisions would come easy. Decision is the selection and formulation of alternatives.
A peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one.
All decisions are based on insufficient evidence.
Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk upright and with open eyes into their misfortune?
Every decision you make is a mistake.
Every decision is like a murder, and our march forward is over the stillborn bodies of all our possible selves that we'll never be.
A wrong decision isn't forever; it can always be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever; they can never be retrieved.
It is better to stir up a question without deciding it, than to decide it without stirring it up.
Every success is usually an admission ticket to a new set of decisions.
Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clear and straight and lays bare the fat and the lean; indecision, a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it.
Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
All decision making is nothing but values clarification.
All my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made.
The quality of a decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim.
When people ask for time, it's always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesn't take half as long to say.
Life puts no greater burdens upon a man than the necessity of making decisions.
If you can't decide, the answer is No.
When faced with a decision always ask "what would be the most fun?"
On all the important stuff, we are emotional creatures who make decisions first and rationalize them after the fact.
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Vacillating people seldom succeed. They seldom win the solid respect of their fellows. Successful men and women are very careful in reaching decisions and very persistent and determined in action thereafter.
It is only in our decisions that we are important.
When in doubt, take more time.
It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards.
When 'Why not do it?' barely outweighs 'Why do it?'—don't do it.
