The Quotation Index — Search results

Tag Tag Decision-making

So you have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.

Charlie Munger Poor Charlie’s Almanack · 2005

Quotes

“The time to worry is three months before a flight. Decide then whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying. To worry is to add another hazard. It retards reactions, makes one unfit. Hamlet would have been a bad aviator. He worried too much.”

Amelia Earhart · Last Flight, 1937 · Primary source

“Remember too that your time is your one finite resource, and when you say yes to one thing you are inevitably saying no to another.”

Andrew S. Grove · High Output Management, 1983 · Primary source

“The absolute truth is that if you don’t know what you want, you won’t get it.”

Andrew S. Grove · High Output Management, 1983 · Primary source

“The maxim Nothing avails but perfection may be spelt shorter: Paralysis.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“The greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.”

John F. Kennedy · Address During The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 · Primary source

“I am more afraid of our own blunders than of the enemy’s devices.”

Thucydides · History of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC · Primary source

“Do not take counsel of your fears.”

George S. Patton · War As I Knew It, 1947 · Primary source

“In the end self-confidence mostly comes from a gut-level realization that nobody has ever died from making a wrong business decision, or taking inappropriate action, or being overruled. And everyone in your operation should be made to understand this.”

Andrew S. Grove · High Output Management, 1983 · Primary source

“Altogether too often, people substitute opinions for facts and emotions for analysis.”

Andrew S. Grove · Only the Paranoid Survive, 1996 · Primary source

“If you’re wrong, you will die. But most companies don’t die because they are wrong; most die because they don’t commit themselves. They fritter away their momentum and their valuable resources while attempting to make a decision. The greatest danger is in standing still.”

Andrew S. Grove · Only the Paranoid Survive, 1996 · Primary source

“Hold your council before dinner; the full belly hates thinking as well as acting.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Take counsel in wine, but resolve afterwards in water.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The modern age has richly rewarded people with a combination of high intelligence and high agency. Now that many aspects of intelligence are successfully being automated, it seems likely that people with relatively lower intelligence but exceptional agency will come into their own if they are willing to egolessly accept AI advice.”

John Carmack · Message on X (Agency Over Intelligence), 2026 · Primary source

“Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It’s been that way all this year. It’s been that way so many times. All of this war is that way.”

Ernest Hemingway · For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940 · Primary source

“You had to trust the people you worked with completely or not at all, and you had to make decisions about the trusting.”

Ernest Hemingway · For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940 · Primary source

“If I think something’s a waste of time or inappropriate I don’t wait to point it out. I say it right away. It’s real time. So you might hear me say That’s the dumbest idea I have ever heard many times during a meeting”

Bill Gates · Playboy Interview: Bill Gates, 1994 · Primary source

“Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.”

Bill Gates · Playboy Interview: Bill Gates, 1994 · Primary source

“Commerce is a game of skill, which every man cannot play, which few men can play well. The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Wealth, 1860 · Primary source

“At Harvard Business School, the great quantitative thing that bonds the first-year class together is what they call decision tree theory. All they do is take high school algebra and apply it to real-life problems. And the students love it. They’re amazed to find that high school algebra works in life.”