Decision Making (Archive)

NOTE: I’m archiving this article here on the site because it’s just SO relevant to what we do at KillTheCan. We talk often about THE DECISION TO QUIT DIPPING. This is a list of quotes originally published on QuoteLady.com. All credit for compiling this awesome list goes to that site. I’m archiving it here cause I hate when I bookmark great content and it goes away. Original article can be found at this location.

• Again and again, the impossible problem is solved when we see that the problem is only a tough decision waiting to be made.–Robert Schuller
• A bad decision well implemented is better than a brilliant decision not well implemented.–Peter Schutz
• Consistently wise decisions can only be made by those whose wisdom is constantly challenged.–Theodore C. Sorensen (Decision-Making in the White House)
• The decision doesn’t have to be logical, it was unanimous.–Unknown
• A decision is made with the brain. A commitment is made with the heart. Therefore, a commitment is much deeper and more binding than a decision.–Nido Qubein
• A decision is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.–Arthur W. Radford (“The Man Behind the Power” in Time, February 25, 1957)
• Decision is the spark that ignites action. Until a decision is made, nothing happens….–Wilfred A. Peterson
• Decisions are a way of defining ourselves. There comes a time in life when there is nothing else to do but go your own way. Where you are headed there are no trails, no paths, just your own instincts.–Sergio Bambaren (The Dolphin)
• Deliberate with caution, but act with decision; and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.–Charles Caleb Colton
• The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.–Flora Whittemore
• Each of us is the sum total of the decisions we make each day.–Dr. Myles Monroe
• 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.–Ben Aaronovitch (“Remembrance Of The Daleks”)
• Five frogs are sitting on a log. Four decide to jump off. How many are left? … Five. Why? Because there’s a difference between deciding and doing!–John Maxwell (The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth)
• Freedom is the opportunity to make decisions…–Kenneth Hildebrand
• Frustration can become like a chain…and it can strangle your efforts for success… or you can get the key out and open the lock. Oh the key? The key of Decision that unchains the future.–Doug Firebaugh (Your Achievement Ezine – Issue No. 153)
• The greatest accomplishment began as a decision once made.–Michael Rawls
• I found every single successful person I’ve ever spoken to had a turning point. The turning point was when they made a clear, specific unequivocal decision that they were not going to achieve success. Some people make that decision at 15 and some people make it at 50, and most people never make it at all.–Brian Tracey (The Treasury of Quotes)
• I invented this rule for myself. I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness, and other things being equal I would make the decision which had the larger number of creative reasons on its side.–Katharine Butler Hathaway (The Little Locksmith)
• If you don’t decide where you’re going, life will decide for you.–Tim Allen 
• In any decision situation, the amount of relevant information available is inversely proportional to the importance of the decision. (Cooke’s Law)–Paul Dickson, comp. (The Official Rules)
• In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do. The worst thing you can do is nothing.–Theodore Roosevelt
• An individual is the end product of the decisions he has made. He who fails to make decisions, for the consequences of which he is responsible, is not a person. The ego, the self, the personality–call it what you will–comes into being and grows through the process of making responsible decisions.–Thomas S. Szasz
• It is not always what we know or analyzed before we make a decision that makes it a great decision. It is what we do after we make the decision to implement and execute it that makes it a good decision.–William Pollard (The Soul of the Firm)
• It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.–Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.–Roy Disney
• The more urgent the need for a decision, the less apparent becomes the identity of the decision-maker.–Murphy’s Eighteenth Law
• Most decisions are seat-of-the-pants judgments. You can create a rationale for anything. In the end, most decisions are based on intuition and faith.–Nathan Myhrvold (in “The Microsoft Provocateur” by Auletta New Yorker)
• 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.–Robyn Davidson
• My basic principle is that you don’t make decisions because they are easy; you don’t make them because they are cheap; you don’t make them because they’re popular; you make them because they’re right.–Theodore Hesburgh
• No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone’s work assignment and responsibility.–Peter F. Drucker (The Effective Executive)
• No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.–Agnes de Mille
• The opposite of fear is not happiness, it is decisiveness. Have no fear; happiness is to be found in having made a decision.–Michael Rawls
• A peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one.–Rita Mae Brown
• People who are making decisions about the future often don’t have access to some of the best ideas in the company, which may be at the periphery or at lower levels.–Rosabeth Moss Kanter
• So when somebody asks me to make a decision about a situation, I don’t offer a solution, I ask a question: What are our options? Give me the good, give me the bad, give me the pretty, give me the ugly, give me the impossible, give me the possible, give me the convenient, give me the inconvenient. Give me the options. All I want are options. And once I have all the options before me, then I comfortably and confidently make my decision.–Jim Rohn ( Jim Rohn’s Weekly E-zine – January 14, 2003)
• Sometimes it’s the smallest decisions that can change your life forever.–Keri Russell
• The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions.–Mike Krzyzewski (Leading with the Heart)
• The two important things I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavor is taking the first step, making the first decision.–Robyn Davidson
• Unless your heart, your soul, and your whole being are behind every decision you make, the words from your mouth will be empty, and each action will be meaningless. Truth and confidence are the roots of happiness.–Kathleen Pedersen
• We rob ourselves when we make decisions in the moment with no thought of how those decisions will impact our futures.–Andy Stanley
• What is living about? It is the decisions you must make between two rights, hard and costly decisions because always you can do one right thing, but sometimes not two.–Willa Gibbs (Seed of Mischief)
• What you always do before you make a decision is consult. The best public policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is determined, you call on them to help you sell it.–Elizabeth Dole
• When a decision has to be made, make it. There is no totally right time for anything.–General George Patton
• When the decision is up before you–and on my desk I have a motto which says “The buck stops here”–the decision has to be made.–Harry S. Truman (Speech, National War College, Dec. 19, 1952)
• Women need to see ourselves as individuals capable of creating change. That is what political and economic power is all about: having a voice, being able to shape the future. Women’s absence from decision-making positions has deprived the country of a necessary perspective.–Madeleine Kunin
• You’ll never have all the information you need to make a decision. If you did, it would be a foregone conclusion, not a decision.–David Mahoney Jr.
• Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.–Brian Tracy