This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. " - Hans Urs von Balthasar
"I think [the Enneagram] is here because we need it, on a global basis, to take more responsibility for our thoughts and emotions and to consider, deeply, how to stand in someone else's shoes, and see the decision or the event from very different sets of eyes and see the validity of it." - Helen Palmer
"The power of decision is my own." - Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn
"No one will deny that an interaction between mind and body takes place whenever we consciously perform a movement. We now make the additional affirmation that our will — the core of consciousness, wherein the self proclaims its being most emphatically — interacts with the body in a special way when it makes a decision and deliberately activates the body. In pre-quantum days, when philosophy was dominated by Laplacian determinism, in which a state classically defined without recourse to probabilities rigorously entailed all future states (of an isolated system), free will was a paradox and an illusion. That is to say, either it could not be explained, despite the immediate, empirically accurate evidence that affirmed it, or its affirmation was false. This situation has changed by virtue of the discovery of quantum mechanics. The new discipline provides. the possibility of a solution by removing the impediment of old-style determinism." - Henry Margenau
"It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. " - Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
"No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. " - Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
"To cherish peace and friendly intercourse with all nations having correspondent dispositions; to maintain sincere neutrality toward belligerent nations; to prefer in all cases amicable discussion and reasonable accommodation of differences to a decision of them by an appeal to arms; to exclude foreign intrigues and foreign partialities, so degrading to all countries and so baneful to free ones; to foster a spirit of independence too just to invade the rights of others, too proud to surrender our own, too liberal to indulge unworthy prejudices ourselves and too elevated not to look down upon them in others; to hold the union of the States as the basis of their peace and happiness; to support the Constitution, which is the cement of the Union, as well in its limitations as in its authorities; to respect the rights and authorities reserved to the States and to the people as equally incorporated with and essential to the success of the general system; to avoid the slightest interference with the right of conscience or the functions of religion, so wisely exempted from civil jurisdiction; to preserve in their full energy the other salutary provisions in behalf of private and personal rights, and of the freedom of the press; to observe economy in public expenditures; to liberate the public resources by an honorable discharge of the public debts; to keep within the requisite limits a standing military force, always remembering that an armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics — that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe; to promote by authorized means improvements friendly to agriculture, to manufactures, and to external as well as internal commerce; to favor in like manner the advancement of science and the diffusion of information as the best aliment to true liberty; to carry on the benevolent plans which have been so meritoriously applied to the conversion of our aboriginal neighbors from the degradation and wretchedness of savage life to a participation of the improvements of which the human mind and manners are susceptible in a civilized state — as far as sentiments and intentions such as these can aid the fulfillment of my duty, they will be a resource which can not fail me." - James Madison
"A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself. " - John Foster, fully John Watson Foster
"The timing of your decision is just as important as the decision you make. To establish appropriate timing for a decision, first discern the connection between the needs around you and the calling within you. When assessing the ramifications for decisions, leaders must take into account the repercussions of failure. Plain common sense can be the best deterrent to far-fetched opportunities. All too often, would-be decision-makers take too much time collecting, analyzing and reanalyzing information, hoping for that one last convincing detail that will dictate the correct choice. Consider if the passage of time shrinks available options or creates new ones." - John C. Maxwell
"The most unnoticed of all miracles is the miracle of repentance. It is not the same thing as rebirth; it is transformation, creation… Repentance is an absolute, spiritual decision made in truthfulness. Its motivations are remorse for the past and responsibility for the future." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"The essence of ultimate decision remains impenetrable to the observer – often, indeed, to the decider himself. " - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"Simple messages travel faster, simpler designs reach the market faster and the elimination of clutter allows faster decision making." - Jack Welch, fully John Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr.
"In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well." - John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
"All that makes existence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of conduct, therefore, must be imposed, by law in the first place, and by opinion on many things which are not fit subjects for the operation of law. What these rules should be, is the principal question in human affairs; but if we except a few of the most obvious cases, it is one of those which least progress has been made in resolving. No two ages, and scarcely any two countries, have decided it alike; and the decision of one age or country is a wonder to another." - John Stuart Mill
"I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal, I would make the decision which had the larger number of creative reasons on its side." - Katharine Butler Hathaway
"Change is the end result of all true learning. Change involves three things: first, a dissatisfaction with self - a felt void or need; second, a decision to change - to fill the void or need; and third, a conscious dedication to the process of growth and change - the willful act of making the change: doing something." - Leo Busacaglia
"Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truely loves does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. ...Conversely, it is not only possible but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
"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." - Malcolm Gladwell
"We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it...We believe that we are always better off gathering as much information as possible an depending as much time as possible in deliberation. We really only trust conscious decision making. But there are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world. The first task of Blink is to convince you of a simple fact: decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately." - Malcolm Gladwell
"I can say unequivocally that every decision we make at Mary Kay Cosmetics is based on the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." - Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash
"In a moment of crisis we don't act out of reasoned judgment but on our conditioned reflexes. We may be able to send men to the moon, but we'd better remember we're still closely related to Pavlov's dog. Think about driving a car: only the beginning driver thinks as he performs each action; the seasoned driver's body works kinesthetically . . .A driver prevents an accident because of his conditioned reflexes; hands and feet respond more quickly than thought. I'm convinced the same thing is true in all other kinds of crisis, too. We react to our conditioning built up of every single decision we've made all our lives; who we have used as our mirrors, as our points of reference. If our slow and reasoned decisions are generally wise, those which have to be made quickly are apt to be wise, too. If our reasoned decisions are foolish, so will be those of the sudden situation." - Madeleine L’Engle
"The hour of decision has arrived. You know what I have done, and what all of us have done. to prevent war and bereavement. But our fate is that in the Land of Israel there is no escape from fighting in the spirit of self-sacrifice. Believe me, the alternative to fighting is Treblinka, and we have resolved that there would be no Treblinkas. This is the moment in which courageous choice has to be made. The criminal terrorists and the world must know that the Jewish people have a right to self-defense, just like any other people." - Menachem Begin
"Freedom is the absolute right of all adult men and women to seek permission for their action only from their own conscience and reason, and to be determined in their actions only by their own will, and consequently to be responsible only to themselves, and then to the society to which they belong, but only insofar as they have made a free decision to belong to it." - Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
"I believe Mackey’s flat statement that “corporate philanthropy is a good thing” is flatly wrong. Consider the decision by the founders of Whole Foods to donate 5 percent of net profits to philanthropy. They were clearly within their rights in doing so. They were spending their own money.…But what reason is there to suppose that the stream of profit distributed in this way would do more good for society than investing that stream of profit in the enterprise itself or paying it out as dividends and letting the stockholders dispose of it? The practice makes sense only because of our obscene tax laws, whereby a stockholder can make a larger gift for a given after-tax cost if the corporation makes the gift on his behalf than if he makes the gift directly. That is a good reason for eliminating the corporate tax or for eliminating the deductibility of corporate charity, but it is not a justification for corporate charity." - Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
"It is evident, on the basis of our considerations, that this appearance of success cannot in the least be regarded as a sign of truth and correspondence with nature. Quite the contrary, suspicion arises that the absence of major difficulties is a result of the decrease of empirical content brought about by the elimination of alternatives, and of facts that can be discovered with their help. In other words, the suspicion arises that this alleged success is due to the fact that the theory, when extended beyond its starting point, was turned into rigid ideology. Such Ideology is "successful" not because it agrees so well with the facts; it is successful because no facts have been specified that could constitute a test, and because some such facts have been removed. Its "success" is entirely man-made. It was decided to stick to some ideas, come what may, and the result was, quite naturally, the survival of these ideas. If now the initial decision is forgotten, or made only implicitly, for example, if it becomes common law in physics, then the survival itself will seem to constitute independent support., it will reinforce the decision, or turn it into an explicate one, and in this way close the circle. This is how empirical "evidence" may be created by a procedure which quotes as its justification the very same evidence it has produced." - Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
"I have come to an unalterable decision – to go and live forever in Polynesia. Then I can end my days in peace and freedom, without thoughts of tomorrow and this eternal struggle against idiots. " - Paul Gaugin, fully Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin
"Decisions are only the beginning of something. When a person takes a decision to dive into what actually holds in the current sweeping around the point did not expect at all even in the dream of the moment decision was taken. " - Paulo Coelho
"It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting… It's doubt that drives a man onward… It's a good idea always to do something relaxing prior to making an important decision in your life… It's best to accept life as it really is and not as I imagined it to be… It takes a huge effort to free yourself from memory… It's not for us to predict the events of the next moment, however, see us move forward, because we have confidence, because we have the faith… It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path. " - Paulo Coelho
"Any situation in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence… to alienate humans from their own decision making is to change them into objects. " - Paulo Freire
"Obedience results from a decision of the mind, not the substance of the body." - Pelagius NULL
"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. " - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
"Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake. " - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
"No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone's work assignment and responsibility." - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
"Teamwork is neither good nor desirable. It is a fact. Wherever people work together or play together they do so as a team. Which team to use for what purpose is a crucial, difficult and risky decision that is even harder to unmake. Managements have yet to learn how to make it." - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
"A time of turbulence is one of great opportunity for those who can understand, accept, and exploit the new realities. One constant theme is, therefore, the need for the decision maker in the individual enterprise to face up to reality and resist the temptation of what "everybody knows," the temptations of the certainties of yesterday, which are about to become of deleterious superstitions of tomorrow. To manage in turbulent times, therefore, means to face up to the new realities. It means starting with the question: "What is the world really like?" rather than the assertions or assumptions that made sense only a few years ago." - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
"Unless the distant goals of meaning, greatness, and destiny are addressed, we can't make an intelligent decision about what to do tomorrow morning -- much less set strategy for a company or for a human life. Nothing is more practical than for people to deepen themselves. The more you understand the human condition, the more effective you are as a businessperson. Human depth makes business sense." - Peter Koestenbaum
"There is a big difference between having a mission statement and being truly mission-based. To be truly mission-based means that key decisions can be referred back to the mission -- our reason for being. It means that people can and should object to management edicts that they do not see as connected to the mission...In most organizations, no one would dream of challenging a management decision on the grounds that it does not serve the mission. In other words, most organizations serve those in power rather than a mission. [The mission] says rather, that the source of legitimate power in the organization is its guiding ideas...The cornerstone of a truly democratic system of governance is not voting or any other particular mechanism. It is the belief that power ultimately flows from ideas, not people. To be truly mission-based is to be democratic in this way, to make the mission more important than the boss, something that not too many corporations have yet demonstrated an ability to do." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge
"Give no decision till both sides thou'st heard." - Phocylides NULL
"Those men who carry about and who listen to accusations should all be hanged, if so it could be a my decision - the carriers by their tongues, the listeners by their ears." - Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL
"Forgiveness is above all a personal choice, a decision of the heart to go against the natural instinct to pay back evil with evil." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
"There seems to be a vicious cycle at work here, making ours not just an economy but a culture of extreme inequality. Corporate decision makers, and even some two-bit entrepreneurs like my boss at The Maids, occupy an economic position miles above that of the underpaid people whose labor they depend on. For reasons that have more to do with class — and often racial — prejudice than with actual experience, they tend to fear and distrust the category of people from which they recruit their workers. Hence the perceived need for repressive management and intrusive measures like drug and personality testing. But these things cost money — $20,000 or more a year for a manager, $100 a pop for a drug test, and so on — and the high cost of repression results in ever more pressure to hold wages down. The larger society seems to be caught up in a similar cycle: cutting public services for the poor, which are sometimes referred to collectively as the 'social wage,' while investing ever more heavily in prisons and cops. And in the larger society, too, the cost of repression becomes another factor weighing against the expansion or restoration of needed services. It is a tragic cycle, condemning us to ever deeper inequality, and in the long run, almost no one benefits but the agents of repression themselves. " - Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
"What these [personality] tests tell employers about potential employees is hard to imagine since the 'right' answer should be obvious to anyone who has ever encountered the principle of hierarchy and subordination. Do I work well with others? You bet, but never to the point where I would hesitate to inform on them for the slightest infraction. Am I capable of independent decision making? Oh yes, but I know better than to let this capacity interfere with a slavish obedience to orders . . . The real function of these tests, I decide, is to convey information not to the employer but to the potential employee, and the information being conveyed is always: You will have no secrets from us. We don't just want your muscles and that portion of your brain that is directly connected to them; we want your innermost self. " - Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
"I have met thousands and thousands of pro-choice men and women. I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard." - Hillary Rodham Clinton
"I have said many times that I can support a ban on late-term abortions, including partial-birth abortions, so long as the health and life of the mother is protected. I’ve met women who faced this heart-wrenching decision toward the end of a pregnancy. Of course it’s a horrible procedure. No one would argue with that. But if your life is at stake, if your health is at stake, if the potential for having any more children is at stake, this must be a woman’s choice." - Hillary Rodham Clinton
"This decision, which is one of the most fundamental, difficult, and soul-searching decisions a woman and a family can make, is also one in which the government should have no role. I believe we can all recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many women. Often, it's a failure of our system of education, and preventive services. It's often a result of family dynamics. This decision is a profound and complicated one; a difficult one, often the most difficult that a woman will ever make. The fact is that the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place." - Hillary Rodham Clinton
"To me it's a failure every time we keep a child in foster care for that child's entire life. You know, there should be a decision made to either re-unite a child by helping a family get back on its feet and take care of its children or we should remove the child and try to find a good loving home with the foster care system but much more importantly, trying to find a permanent home." - Hillary Rodham Clinton
"Soon after a hard decision something inevitably occurs to cast doubt. Holding steady against that doubt usually proves the decision." - R. I. Fitzhenry, fully Robert I. Fitzhenry
"The world is governed by mercy... but the divine decision is made by the preponderance of the good or bad in one's actions." - Rabbi Akiva, fully Rebbe Akiva ben Yosef NULL