If you want to be a good strategist, you can never just go off a principle you read in a book. You need to adapt what you do to the situation; no rule of thumb is true all the time.

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

I had to abandon free market principles in order to save the free market system.

I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.

When you get angry, your options narrow.

If you have a family mission statement that clarifies what your purpose is, then you use that as the criterion by which you make the decisions.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space where we choose our response.

A man’s own judgment should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself.

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

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

Any man can call time out, but no man can say how long the time out will be.

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.

Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

Loving others always costs us something and requires effort. And you have to decide to do it on purpose. You can’t wait for a feeling to motivate you.

I don’t ever make moves under pressure.

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

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

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

Imagination decides everything.

I couldn’t say I ever dreamt of becoming a composer, a pianist, or anything else for that matter. I have the kind of brain where nothing is set in stone.

I don’t have a magic formula for prioritizing the world’s problems.

I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make-it-on-my-own kinda thing.

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

‚Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.

No one can give you better advice than yourself.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

I’ve never gone wrong trusting my gut.

If you’re sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign.

Our physiological constitution is obviously a product of Darwinian processes, insofar as you buy the evolutional theory as a generative, as an account of the mechanism that generated us. Our physiology evolved, our behaviors evolved, and our accounts of those behaviors, both successful and unsuccessful, evolved.

When in doubt tell the truth.

The government’s job is good governance for everybody. My government will make policies; if you fit into it, come on board, or stay where you are. My job is not to spoon-feed anyone.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat – no matter who killed the meat for him.

I bought a gun and chose drugs instead.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

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

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.

One reason I don’t want to play in England again is because we don’t have any personalities.

If you are the kind of person who is waiting for the ‚right‘ thing to happen, you might wait for a long time. It’s like waiting for all the traffic lights to be green for five miles before starting the trip.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

Although we resolutely supported the armed struggle against Batista’s tyranny, we were, on principle, opposed to any terrorist action that could cause the death of innocent people.

You can’t have a value structure without a hierarchy. They’re the same thing because a value structure means one thing takes precedence over another.

I act on impulse and I go with my instincts.

Sometimes what works 40 years ago doesn’t work today.

I had to make a choice at one point in my life, of missing films or missing my children. It was a very easy decision to make because I missed my children so very much.

Change is always tough. Even for those who see themselves as agents of change, the process of starting a new thing can cause times of disorientation, uncertainty and insecurity.

What matters in the Sun-tzu universe are not positions of strength and power, but situations in which you have options, full of potential force.

The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good.

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.

I have no delusions about my likability in every scenario. I know that in order to get things done the way you want them, oftentimes your position will be unpopular.

I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.

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

Forgiveness is not a feeling – it’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy and it may take time to get through the process, depending on the severity of the offense.

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

Leadership is a choice, not a position.

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.