I act on impulse and I go with my instincts.

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.

It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

My friends ask me if I want more kids, and I always say yes, I want more; it’s the best thing you can have in your life.

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

I have a slight bit of OCD, I think. I’m not walking around flipping light switches. But when I say I’m going to do something, I have to do it.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

We need an adult in the White House. When making life-or-death, war-or-peace decisions, a president can’t just pop off or lash out irrationally.

I’ve never gone wrong trusting my gut.

If the critics are right that I’ve made all my decisions based on polls, then I must not be very good at reading them.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

If you are a parent, you have probably already realized that your children are always watching what you do. And just as children watch their parents and emulate their behavior, so do employees who are watching their bosses.

Necessity never made a good bargain.

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.

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

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

Every President wants to do right.

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.

When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn’t any good reason to refer to it.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

With Benghazi, I don’t see anyone saying, ‚Hey look, I am overall responsible for this and therefore, I take responsibility for what happened. It’s my fault.‘ I haven’t heard that yet. Meanwhile, the other side of the coin, the Osama bin Laden raid, it seems everyone made that decision, and that’s just unbelievable to me.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

It’s not easy being young. It’s hard to know what to do.

Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

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.

I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.

I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. I’m really confused now.

Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.

I don’t care whether you’re driving a hybrid or an SUV. If you’re headed for a cliff, you have to change direction. That’s what the American people called for in November, and that’s what we intend to deliver.

Women tend to be more intuitive, or to admit to being intuitive, and maybe the hard science approach isn’t so attractive. The way that science is taught is very cold. I would never have become a scientist if I had been taught like that.

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

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

When you’re in a leadership role, you can never please all of the people all of the time. There’s also a lot of responsibility that goes along with it that others may not realize.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

Indecision may or may not be my problem.

If you’re a quarterback, you want everything on your shoulders. You want to be the one to make the decisions.

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

I don’t care much for equations myself. This is partly because it is difficult for me to write them down, but mainly because I don’t have an intuitive feeling for equations.

If you are part of a religion that very strongly insists that you believe then to decide not to do that is quite a big hurdle to jump over. You never forget the thought process you went through. It becomes part of your whole intellectual picture.

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

We do need women in civic life. We do need women to run for office, to be in political office. We need a feminist to be at the table when decisions are being made so that the right decisions will be made.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts… to my surprise… almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias.

The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love – almost as violent and much more mischievous.

He does it with better grace, but I do it more natural.

I think women want to take care of themselves, and I think having a voice in how that is done is very important.

Dogs never bite me – just humans.