Inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.

I don’t believe in signing anything and everything that comes my way. I leave it to my agency to help narrow them down for me, but I do research it myself before signing. The image of the brand and its ambassadors go hand in hand.

Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do.

My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.

No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.

I don’t really get into a big intellectual analysis of why I am going to do a certain script or not.

When you get angry, your options narrow.

It is a fine game to play – the game of politics – and it is well worth waiting for a good hand before really plunging.

Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny.

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.

I’ve seen how the issues that come across a president’s desk are always the hard ones – the problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer.

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.

The shortest answer is doing the thing.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.

He who molds the public sentiment… makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to make.

Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.

The problem with car dealerships is you’ve already decided what you want to buy before you even go there, and you’re really just going there to talk through some annoying negotiation.

You have to just make the choices you make in life. I made the choices I made because I believed they were right for me.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.

A President’s hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

If an idea isn’t exciting, you shouldn’t do it.

We should work with the principle that a work that can be done at a lower level should never be escalated to a higher level.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.

In politics… never retreat, never retract… never admit a mistake.

In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

Quitting is the easiest thing to do.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

I didn’t want to submit to the army and then, on the day of judgment, have God say to me, ‚Why did you do that?‘ This life is a trial, and you realize that what you do is going to be written down for Judgment Day.

At one point he decided enough was enough.

It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

As is the case with most people in this game, I am driven by financial motives and creative motives; the question I had to answer is which motive I will give priority to?

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

For how many things, which for our own sake we should never do, do we perform for the sake of our friends.

I don’t think you ever really know what all you’re doing, so you have to act on faith.

Once I’ve decided to do something, I do usually try to carry it through to fruition.

I’ve turned down shows offering large amounts of money.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

The die is cast.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

People want to go out and travel around and meet cool people. I could just go live in Vermont, but is that what I really want?

To summarize, draft resistance can make use of the inegalitarian nature of American society as a technique for increasing the cost of American aggression, and it threatens values that are important to those in a decision-making position.

When should a college athlete turn pro? Not until he has earned all he can in college as an amateur.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.