This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is always a latent tension between what facilitates timely decision and what promotes thoroughness and accuracy in assessment.
Omar Bradley, fully Omar Nelson Bradley
This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live.
You must ask yourself first, what God is. You must see how at the very bottom of His existence, as you conceive of it, lie these two thoughts – purpose and righteousness; how absolutely impossible it is to give God any personality except as the fulfillment of these two qualities – the intelligence that plans in love, and the righteousness that lives in duty.
Duty | Existence | Fulfillment | God | Intelligence | Love | Personality | Purpose | Purpose | Qualities | Righteousness | God |
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
Disagreement alone can provide alternatives to a decision. And a decision without an alternative is a desperate gambler’s throw, no matter how carefully thought through it might be.
Decision | Disagreement | Thought | Thought |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
There is no inherent authority of `truth’ to any concept except for the subjective value ascribed to it. Credibility is a subjective decision and purely experiential and indefinable. What is convincing to one person may be dismissed as nonsense by another. The realization and knowingness of God is radically and purely subjective. There is not even the hypothetical possibility that reason could arrive at Truth. Truth is knowable only by virtue of the identity of being it.
Authority | Decision | God | Nonsense | Reason | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | God | Value |
F. A. Hayek, fully Friedrich August Hayek or von Hayek
Outside the sphere of individual responsibility there is neither goodness or badness… Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them has our decision moral value.
Decision | Individual | Responsibility | Sacrifice |
Purpose directs decision making. Our willingness to accept direction in almost all walks of life suggest that many, if not most, may actually prefer to be told what to think, how to behave, and what to buy. Being told, I suppose, simplifies life.
Purpose directs decision making. We look for leaders with vision, people who can imagine possible futures, describe desirable ideals, then tell us how they might be achieved. Our willingness to accept direction in almost all walks of life suggest that many, if not most, may actually prefer to be told what to think, how to behave, and what to buy. Being told simplifies life.
Decision | Ideals | Life | Life | People | Purpose | Purpose | Vision |
Fatima Jinna, also known as Madr-e-Millat, mother of the nation
There is a magic power in your own hands. Take your vital decisions – they may be grave and momentous and far-reaching in their consequences. Think a hundred times before you take any decision, but once a decision is taken, stand by it as one man.
Consequences | Decision | Grave | Magic | Man | Power | Think |
In any decision situation, the amount of relevant information available is inversely proportional to the importance of the decision.
Decision |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
Lay plans for the accomplishment of the difficult before it becomes difficult; make something big by starting with it when small.
Does music make plants grow, or are there among the plans some that are musical?
Music |
To serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to love in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one’s neighbor.
Decision | God | Love | Responsibility | God |
Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
Somewhere along the line of development, we discover what we really are, and then we make our real decision for which we are responsible. Make that decision primarily for yourself, because you can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your own child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life and what you become yourself.
Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
There are many things children accept as “grown-up things” over which they have no control and for which they have no responsibility – for instance, weddings, having babies, buying houses, and driving cars. Parents who are separating really need to help their children put divorce on that grown-up list, so that children do not see themselves as the cause of their parents’ decision to live apart.
Cause | Children | Control | Decision | Need | Parents | Responsibility |
Robert Edward Rubin, aka Eddy Rubin
In business, the chief focus is on profitability. Government, by contrast, has no simple bottom line but rather a vast array of interests and priorities, many of which exist in a state of tension or conflict. For that reason, decision making in government is vastly more complex.
Business | Contrast | Decision | Focus | Government | Reason | Government |
David J. Schwartz, fully David Joseph Schwartz
Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success. Remember this, too! Big ideas and big plans are often easier – certainly no more difficult – than small ideas and small plans.
I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude. Attitude keeps me going or cripples my progress...It alone fuels my fire or assaults my hope. When my attitude is right, there’s no barrier too high, no valley too deep, no dream too extreme, no challenge too great for me.
Challenge | Choice | Day | Decision | Extreme | Hope | Progress | Right |