Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Jack Welch, fully John Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr.

Simple messages travel faster, simpler designs reach the market faster and the elimination of clutter allows faster decision making.

Decision |

John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"

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.

Capitalism | Choice | Day | Decision | Enough | Good | Public | World |

Katharine Butler Hathaway

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.

Decision | Fear |

Kay Boyle

The decision to speak out is the vocation and lifelong peril by which the intellectual must live.

Decision | Peril |

Leo Busacaglia

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.

Change | Decision | Dedication | Growth | Self |

M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck

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.

Commitment | Decision | Feelings | Love |

Malcolm Gladwell

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.

Decision | Good |

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.

Better | Decision | Effort | Good | Haste | Means | Sense | Time | Trust | World |

Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL

The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.

Decision | Risk | Terror | Wrong |

Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash

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.

Decision |

Madeleine L’Engle

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.

Accident | Beginning | Better | Body | Decision | Judgment | Men | Will | Crisis | Think |

Menachem Begin

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.

Choice | Decision | Fate | Fighting | Land | People | Right | Spirit | War | World | Fate |

Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin

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.

Absolute | Action | Conscience | Decision | Men | Right | Society | Society |

Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

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.

Cost | Decision | Good | Justification | Philanthropy | Practice | Reason | Rights | Sense | Society | Society |

Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend

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.

Absence | Appearance | Decision | Evidence | Justification | Law | Success | Survival | Suspicion | Truth | Will |

Paul Gaugin, fully Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin

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.

Decision | Eternal | Peace | Struggle | Tomorrow |

Pelagius NULL

Obedience results from a decision of the mind, not the substance of the body.

Decision |

Paulo Coelho

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.

Beginning | Decision |

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.

Decision | Doubt | Effort | Events | Good | Important | Life | Life | Man | Right | Think |

Paulo Freire

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.

Change | Decision | Inquiry | Men |