Quotes & Sayings About Big Decisions

The authors, academics from Northeastern University, Harvard University, and the University of Houston, concluded that Google Flu Trends had wildly overestimated the number of flu cases in the United States for more than two years. The article, "The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis," concluded that the errors were, at least in part, due to the decisions made by GFT engineers about what to include in their models - mistakes the academics dubbed "algorithmic dynamics" and "big data hubris. — Clayton M Christensen

No matter what you do with your life during the day, there's always that moment when you have to wake up with yourself, with yourself and with the person that's sleeping beside you. That's the person that you make a home with, discuss life's big decisions with, share your finances, eat, shop, maybe parent with. That's the person you share your body with forever, kiss, touch, the one you sit on the couch with and watch movies, the one who gives you a hug when you've had a rough day. That's the person you put up a Christmas tree with and arrive home with for the holidays, the person you watch grow old and who still loves you when you're not as nice to look at, the one who holds your hand when you're dying. And none of that had anything to do with wrestling. — Eli Easton

The right thing to do is so easy to see when you're seventeen years old and don't have to make any big decisions. When you know that no matter what you do, someone will take care of you and fix everything. But when you're grown up, the world is not that black and white, and the right thing doesn't a tidy little arrow pointing to it. — Huntley Fitzpatrick

I like to make big decisions when I am at home living a routine life, getting up, walking my dog, having breakfast, when I have no pressure. I do not like doing it when I making a film. It is too stressful. — Paul Walker

If you mean by capitalism the God-given right of a few big corporations to make all the decisions that will affect millions of workers and consumers and to exclude everyone else from discussing and examining those decisions, then the unions are threatening capitalism. — Max Lerner

The Oval Office is a place where there's been, obviously, a lot of amazing experiences over a seven-and-a-half year period. My presidency is one where I've had to make some very tough decisions. I guess some presidencies are kind of - were real smooth, there were no real big issues. Well, that's not the way mine is. — George W. Bush

So much water. It just went on and on and on, a sight that squeezed the soul. He felt so damn small out here. And that felt good. Maybe that was strange, but it felt good. He was insignificant. The world was too big to care about his decisions. There was no weight here, no burden. — Michael Koryta

Friends are sometimes a big help when they share your feelings. In the context of decisions, the friends who will serve you best are those who understand your feelings but are not overly impressed by them. — Daniel Kahneman

As an actress you can participate, you can be a co-author, help the director. But I always wanted to be able to make the big decisions. — Valeria Golino

Funding for the Special Operations Network comes directly from the government. Most work is centralized, but all of the SpecOps divisions have local representatives to keep a watchful eye on any provincial problems. They are administered by local commanders, who liaise with the national offices for information exchange, guidance and policy decisions. Like any other big government department, it looks good on paper but is an utter shambles. Petty infighting and political agendas, arrogance and sheer bloody-mindedness almost guarantees that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. — Jasper Fforde

I've just grown up a lot and started to encounter some of the big decisions of life in terms of what career I wanted to do and figuring out personal relationships and things. — Lee Norris

Little choices determine habit;
Habit carves and molds character
Which makes the big decisions. — Elizabeth George

High achievers spot rich opportunities swiftly, make big decisions quickly and move into action immediately. Follow these principles and you can make your dreams come true. — Robert H. Schuller

Some people want fame, popularity and huge sales. I've always hoped to have a really long career. So I've tried to make each of my creative decisions and business decisions to allow for longevity. As a side effect I got really famous and really big. I didn't realize the two could go together. — Jewel

Imagine you're a forty-year-old, Richard," Hamilton said to me around this time, while working as a salesman at a Radio Shack in Lynn Valley,"and suddenly somebody comes up to you saying, 'Hi, I'd like you to meet Kevin. Kevin is eighteen and will be making all of your career decisions for you.' I'd be flipped out. Wouldn't you? But that's what life is all about - some eighteen-year-old kid making your big decisions for you that stick for a lifetime." He shuddered. — Douglas Coupland

Baseball was a safe bet. Baseball also didn't have a girlfriend. Then again, baseball didn't have big brown eyes or show a little hint of cleavage under its uniforms. Decisions, decisions. — Rachel Spangler

I'm not big on looking back beyond the moment in which decisions and events occur. I'm always pushing forward. — David Stern

I enjoy my work. The reason I worked so hard all my life is because I want to be making big decisions and managing at the very highest level. — Brendan Rodgers

People were paid lots of money to make stupid decisions, people in big banks, and when people are paid to be stupid they'll be stupid. The question was, did they know they were being stupid or were they just stupid? I think you need to take it on a case by case basis. There was some sinister activity, but I think by and by it was people being incentivised to do the wrong thing. — Michael Lewis

It was Friday, July 24, 1992, when I stepped on the train. Every year I think of it. I see it as my real birthday: the birth of me as a person, making decisions about my life on my own. I was not running away from Islam, or to democracy. I didn't have any big ideas then. I was just a young girl and wanted some way to be me; so I bolted into the unknown. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Big decisions in my life have always come easy and are made without hesitation. It is easier for me to make a life-changing decision than to decide what to get for dessert. — Tony Hawk

I suppose it is a bit of a date that we're having at the moment. As is usually the case you don't get married on a first date, you've got to go out a few times before you make any big decisions. — Aidy Boothroyd

I cannot stress enough the perils of your friends marrying or becoming court inventors. One day you are all a society of outlaws, adventurous comrades and companions who will be pushing off somewhere or other when things become tiresome; you have all the world to choose from, just by looking at the map ... And then, suddenly, they're not interested any more. They want to keep warm. They're afraid of rain. They start collecting big things that can't fit in a rucksack. They talk only of small things. They don't like to make sudden decisions and do something contrariwise. Formerly they hoisted sail; now they carpenter little shelves for porcelain mugs. — Tove Jansson

In life you make the small decisions with your head and the big decisions with your heart. — Omid Kordestani

Fate.
She'd never been a big beliver in things like that, had always believed that solid decisions and hard work were what paid off. And they had.
But, really, it was getting to the point where it felt like the universe was screaming at her to pay attention! — Bella Andre

It is very difficult to make really big,
important, life-changing decisions because we are all susceptible
to a formidable array of decision biases. There are more of them
than we realize, and they come to visit us more often than we
like to admit. — Dan Ariely

The way we frame information for ourselves or for others can make a big difference in how we see and respond to choice. Every time we encounter new information or reexamine old information, we're influenced by its presentation. We can use framing to our advantage, but sometimes it has a negative impact on the quality of our decisions. — Sheena Iyengar

Many of the big decisions over progression, promotion and future career trajectory are taken when people are in their late twenties and thirties, putting women at a huge disadvantage because this is the very time they are most likely to be having a break to have children. — Cherie Blair

Mailer famously labeled writing the spooky art. He was right. There's a lot of frontal lobe blather, a lot of pencil-sharpening and knuckle-cracking and drafting and chat, but the big decisions are made in the locked subconscious, decisions not just on the writing but on the conditions for writing: I resolve on the one story I've never told and lo! Here I sit, holed up in a house that means nothing to me, bone-certain no other places will do. Art, even the humble autobiographer's, invokes occult necessities. — Glen Duncan

Cumulatively small decisions, choices, actions, make a very big difference. — Jane Goodall

Remember that your reputation is everything. You build your personal brand through everything you do, whether big actions or small decisions, and that brand will stay with you throughout your career. — Jan Fields

Some people say that they have 'no regrets in life'. I think this normally means that they have not recognized the harm and pain that they have caused themselves and others with their actions. I have a big bunch of regrets. I don't dwell on them, but I'd be a fool not to have recognized that certain decisions and actions have been detrimental. — Matt Lewis

The daily decisions made to stay, to find the new equilibrium. She likes the intimacy, the shared seclusion, efforts at inclusion. How these pockets of time are big enough for only the two of them to share, and how that feels overwhelming, but also incandescent and right. — Jay E. Tria

And as a Member of this body, I believe firmly that States do have rights, and I believe that local communities have rights, and they have made decisions to allow these businesses to prosper as they are a big part of their economy. — Jon Porter

The more big business talks about something, the less of it there is. For example, it 'values' jobs just at the moment when they disappear; it revels in 'autonomy' when in fact you have to fill out forms in triplicate for the slightest trifle and ask the advice of six people to make insignificant decisions; it harps on 'ethics' while believing in absolutely nothing. — Corinne Maier

As I go off into the big black abyss of my future, I have to admit that I am terrified and also a bit insecure in my decisions. But, I also realize that anyone who has ever gone off into uncharted waters must have felt similar to the way I feel now, which gives me a small ounce of comfort. I don't know how to do what I am doing, I have no way of knowing if this is the right way or not. But I guess I'll never know until I get there. So, this is me, being a pioneer. — Leigh Hershkovich

The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way; for when you read in the papers the interminable discussions and the bickering and the prognostications and the turmoil, the disagreements and the fateful decisions and agreements and the plans and the programs and the threats and the counter threats, then you close your eyes and the sea dispatches one more big roller in the unbroken line since the beginning of the world and it combs and breaks and returns foaming and saying: "So soon?"
E. B. White "On A Florida Key — E.B. White

a big part of a middle manager's work is to supply information and know-how, and to impart a sense of the preferred method of handling things to the groups under his control and influence. A manager also makes and helps to make decisions. Both kinds of basic managerial tasks can only occur during face-to-face encounters, and therefore only during meetings. Thus I will assert again that a meeting is nothing less than the medium through which managerial work is performed. That means we should not be fighting their very existence, but rather using the time spent in them as efficiently as possible. The — Andrew S. Grove

The explanations for the things we do in life are many and complex. Supposedly mature adults should live by logic, listen to their reason. Think things out before they act.
But maybe they never heard what Dr. London told me one, Freud said that for the little things in life we should react according to our reason. But for really big decisions, we should heed what our unconscious tells us. — Erich Segal

I like thinking big. I always have. To me it's very simple: if you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. Most people think small, because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. And that gives people like me a great advantage. My — Donald J. Trump

Least of all shall we preserve democracy or foster its growth if all the power and most of the important decisions rest with an organization far too big for the common man to survey or comprehend. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

I know I have a vagina, but that doesn't negate the fact that I have a brain and a spine, so I can make my own decisions about my life and deal with the consequences. I'm also not real big on dudes talking about my shit behind my back. — Kristen Ashley

There is a gap between what we know and what we want to experience. Either, fear will keep us tethered to the familiar or plung us into the sea. The bridge is either God or ourselves, and with each big decision we must choose who we trust the most. — Shannon L. Alder

Little decisions shape big consequences. — Mehek Bassi

I'm a big girl. I can make my own decisions about my dance partners."
He raised his arms in defense. "All I'm saying is that the guy let you trip and fall. I worry about you dancing in someone else's arms. — Ada Adams

The only mental games in ski racing is the mental game against yourself. Is the whole goal of life preserving your life as long as you can? No. The goal is to enjoy your life, challenge yourself, to sometimes make stupid decisions-which are sometimes fun and sometimes idiotic and sometimes just a big fat mistake you regret. — Bode Miller

One of the big failures for the big auto companies is that even the CEO and the top management often don't understand design and manufacturing. As a CEO, you have to make decisions; you need to have knowledge. — Henrik Fisker

I've written things about that, about how life's really big decisions aren't right or wrong, it's just that one lives different lives. No, I don't think your life went wrong. — Bernhard Schlink

No, what's troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics
the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working concensus to tackle any big problem. — Barack Obama

There's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason it will never ever ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better. Don't look for it. Be happy with what you've got.. because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now.. the real owners. The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. — George Carlin

I don't know how often opportunity knocks, but temptations to make foul decisions bang on my door all day long. And smelly decisions make for smelly problems later on. A few little decisions, good or bad, can make a big difference in a life. Better to run from those skunks than with them. — Steve Goodier

In many ways, large profits are even more insidious than large losses in terms of emotional destabilization. I think it's important not to be emotionally attached to large profits. I've certainly made some of my worst trades after long periods of winning. When you're on a big winning streak, there's a temptation to think that you're doing something special, which will allow you to continue to propel yourself upward. You start to think that you can afford to make shoddy decisions. You can imagine what happens next. As a general rule, losses make you strong and profits make you weak. — William Eckhardt

That's a real big part of what holds this religion together: it's not having to make those critical decisions that many of us have to make, and be responsible for your decisions. — Jon Krakauer

I'm a big, big reader of pretty much everything that Chuck Colson has written. And I consulted with him when I was making some decisions about running for the Senate in the first place. — John Thune

Really, I'm never much of a goal-setter. Whenever I've tried to make big, solid plans, they don't happen. I'm more into whatever the circumstances are that present themselves, making wise decisions around that. — Rose McIver

Little decisions over time make a big impact on our lives. — Eric Samuel Timm

We had a big controversy in the United States when there was a limited number of dialysis machines. In Seattle, they appointed what they called a 'God committee' to choose who should get it, and that committee was eventually abandoned. Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions. — Ezekiel Emanuel

If you have 'too big to fail' for cities or for states, and they believe they'll be bailed out, they'll continue to make unwise decisions. — Rand Paul

If you have Level 5 leaders who get the right people on the bus, if you confront the brutal facts of reality, if you create a climate where the truth is heard, if you have a Council and work within the three circles, if you frame all decisions in the context of a crystalline Hedgehog Concept, if you act from understanding, not bravado - if you do all these things, then you are likely to be right on the big decisions. — James C. Collins

My family has loved Minnesota and that was one of the big reasons we decided to come back. For me, family decisions were a big part to coming back to the Twins. — Jim Thome

I feel like I've been very smart in the way that I carry myself and treat myself. I feel like my mom was a big part of that just because she's always let us make our own decisions, and we've known very much about the mistakes and the dangers already of whatever this Hollywood life may be. — Evan Ross

AS a matter of fact, God isn't asking you to be thankful. He's asking you to give thanks. There's a big difference. One response involves emotions, the other your choices, your decisions about a situation, your intent, your 'step of faith. — Joni Eareckson Tada

It occurs to me that as different as we are in our behavior and decisions, our most basic, knee-jerk emotional reactions to really big things are often remarkably similar. And it is in these moments that I am most grateful for my sister. — Emily Giffin

This, of course, is the big dance of capitalism: how to keep morality from gumming up the gears of profit, how to convince people to make bad decisions without seeing them as bad. — Steve Almond

As a CEO, you get sucked into dealing with all the tasks of being a CEO. There's a big meeting, a big discussion, and you get into all the big issues, which is your job. But what CEOs often lose sight of is that it's all about the people who work for you. For every 1,000 decisions, 999 were being made when I was not in the room. — Douglas Conant

I'm a big baseball fan, and I feel proprietary about the Dodgers. I'm not the owner. I'm not the manager. But I feel passionate about the decisions that they make, and I take it personally when they make decisions I don't like. — Carlton Cuse

The world is better served by syncretic economists and policymakers who can hold multiple ideas in their heads than by 'one-handed' economists who promote one big idea regardless of context. — Dani Rodrik

Ultimately, we are all products of the experiences we have and the decisions we make as children, and it remains a peculiar detail of human condition that something as precious as the future is entrusted to us when we possess so little foresight. Perhaps that's what makes hindsight so intriguing. When you're young the future is a blank canvas, but looking back you are always able to see the big picture. — Simon Pegg

Overshadowing all Roosevelt's decisions, Perkins wrote, "was his feeling that nothing in human judgment is final. One may courageously take the step that seems right today because it can be modified tomorrow if it does not work well." He was an improviser, not a planner. He took a step and adjusted, a step and adjusted. Gradually a big change would emerge. — David Brooks

California had organized itself, not accidentally, into highly partisan legislative districts. It elected highly partisan people to office and then required these people to reach a two-thirds majority to enact any new tax or meddle with big spending decisions. On the off chance that they found some common ground, it could be pulled out from under them by voters through the initiative process. Throw in term limits - no elected official now serves in California government long enough to fully understand it - and you have a recipe for generating maximum contempt for elected officials. Politicians are elected to get things done and are prevented by the system from doing it, leading the people to grow even more disgusted with them. "The vicious cycle of contempt," as Mark Paul calls it. California state government was designed mainly to maximize the likelihood that voters will continue to despise the people they elect. — Michael Lewis

I just want to be really careful with decisions I make. When you make a decision about your career, it changes your life in a really big way. — Michael Cera

When a situation becomes too uncomfortable for you, it's either it's way bigger than you can handle or you've become too big for it. The catch, though, is that you decide which is - To outgrow it or let it grow all over you. — Ufuoma Apoki

I don't know how to choose my purpose - that sounds to big and... significant. But I know who I am, and I've chosen the things that are important to me. I think the best decisions I make about what to do in my life come when I'm being true to both of those things — April White

Often we suffer because we don't realize what's essential.
We may want to be rich, but the rich are lonely.
We see all those people on TV that have won the lottery and want to be at their place, but studies show that they are even more miserable after having won the big check. They don't really know what to do with all that money, take poor decisions on how to spend them, change themselves and their friends don't see them in the same way. — Lidiya K.

No matter what your decisions are, no matter what your votes are, if you're not playing by the rules, you're taking a big risk. — Shelley Moore Capito

I had crossed fifty years of my life, and come across uncountable females as son, husband, father, friend in my life. Coming across several women I carefully studied most of them, and feels that I got master knowing female. But every time when my heart comes across to a female, my all knowledge on female goes to a vain. What they want? , What are they looking for? When their mind changes? When their priority changes? No one knows, in a minute they use to change decisions, if someone ask, they says it's a little thing. They never think, little things makes big or if they can't stick on little things how they can stand in important decisions. They never show they are weak, but every time they are compromising themselves. It's their big heart but impacting every around. They always think they can do anything by doing nothing. — Nutan Bajracharya

I don't want to be afraid of bright colors, or new sounds, or big love, or risky decisions, or strange experiences, or weird endeavors, or sudden changes, or even failure. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I find it ironic and unfortunately because people are very vulnerable to populism now these days because they are desperate, we had really difficult times and we had difficult decisions to make. It is natural and it is logical to have people trying to not to vote for Syriza but to vote against the big parties that were in the Government for the last decade. So it is something that you can explain that way. — Eva Kaili

In Latino culture, the quinceanera's a big thing - it's when a girl becomes a woman. But I think age is just a number - you become a woman with the responsibilities you take on and the decisions you make. I started realizing that every day is a gift - you have every day to be thankful you're alive. — Emily Rios

My best life lessons and education didn't come from a classroom - they've come from the wild. How you act in the big moments, the ones that challenge you, scare you, tempt you, and force you to make the right decisions, is what defines you. — Bear Grylls

I've been around racing a fairly long time, but when it comes to the important issues, I'm happy to let others make the big decisions. — Mats Sundin

But the important thing is that when you do find one where you really do know what you are doing, you must buy in quantity ... Charlie and I have made a dozen or so very big decisions relative to net worth, although not as big as they should have been. And in each of those, we've known that we were almost certain to be right going in. — Warren Buffett

In the course of the century, so many individual decisions are made that no single one of them is ever critical. Each decision is lost in the torrent of judgments that make up a century. — George Friedman

When the Americans are behind you, they're behind you 100%, and this gives you real confidence as an architect. They expect you to lead a building project - to make the kind of big and costly decisions that, in Britain, have been handed over to project managers and cost-cutters. — David Chipperfield

People say that it's the big decisions that are important ... that these are the type of issues worthy of prolonged consideration. But no one ever explains how it's the little choices that send your life careening in another direction. — Julie Gittus

As an economist specializing in the global economy, international trade and debt, I have spent most of my career helping others make big decisions - prime ministers, presidents and chief executives - and so I'm all too aware of the risks and dangers of poor choices in the public as well as the private sphere. — Noreena Hertz

In an environment where there are too many choices, too many decisions, too much information, and too many demands on our cognition, it pays to be judicious about the complexity we voluntarily sign up for. When we make the decision to streamline our lives, we also create time and room to think with focus and intent. In a complex world, time to stand back and look at the big picture, time to consider our options more carefully, time to make more deliberate decisions, and time to breathe are necessities for survival. — Rebecca D. Costa

Make good choices in order to manifest your true identity; manifest your true being. What others see in you now is just a mild photo of you. The wild copy is yet to come. Print that image; make it bigger! — Israelmore Ayivor

The big idea we start with is: "How is the genome interpreted, and how are stable decisions that affect gene expression inherited from one cell to the next?" This is one of the most competitive areas of molecular biology at the moment, and the students are reading papers that in some instances were published this past year. As a consequence, one of the most common answers I have to give to their questions is, "We just don't know." — Shirley M. Tilghman

Good big decisions do not take time at all, if they do you are in trouble. — Warren Buffett

I'm against big bureaucracy in Washington making health care decisions. I just have an aversion to bureaucrats. But it's not just government bureaucrats. I don't like HMO bureaucrats and insurance company bureaucrats either. — Gary Bauer

The fact is, women don't like to talk about money, let alone deal with it. Though we're killing it at work, earning more than ever, running our households, and making big-ticket decisions, too many women still worry they'll be judged by what they earn and how they spend it. — Alexa Von Tobel

I make films, and I hope that people come to see them. If they don't, I pay a big price. But I can't make decisions where I would change my own standards or my own taste in order to court the public in some way. — Sydney Pollack

You have to make sure that your assets and your back is protected before you make any big decisions. — Adam Rich

But when it comes to integrating career and family, planning too far in advance can close doors rather than open them. I have seen this happen over and over. Women rarely make one big decision to leave the workforce. Instead, they make a lot of small decisions along the way, making accommodations and sacrifices that they believe will be required to have a family. Of all the ways women hold themselves back, perhaps the most pervasive is that they leave before they leave. The — Sheryl Sandberg

I do not make decisions [as governor] based on what have I learned through my Bible studies, what have I learned in my religious classes in school. I'm a big believer in separation of church and state, and I think that's what ... the law is. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

When the corporation's investment capital becomes impatient for growth, good money becomes bad money because it triggers a subsequent cascade of inevitable incorrect decisions. Innovators who seek funding for the disruptive innovations that could ultimately fuel the company's growth with a high probability of success now find that their trial balloons get shot down because they can't get big enough fast enough. Managers of most disruptive businesses can't credibly project that the business will become very big very fast, because new-market disruptions need to compete against nonconsumption and must follow an emergent strategy process. Compelling them to project big numbers forces them to declare a strategy that confidently crams the innovation into a large, existing, and obvious market whose size can be statistically substantiated. This means competing against consumption. — Clayton M Christensen

Yes, life was made up of these instances in time. Big moments hidden inside little decisions. — Genevieve Dewey

Indeed, the big decisions in life are hardly ever clear - except for one. And that one is piercingly clear: life is a series of dilemmas, of options, of conundrums, of possibilities taken and not taken. Negotiating these moments well is of the essence of the life well lived. — Joan D. Chittister

I think quite often when you have a hell of a lot more money and time, as you very much do on a big studio film, you don't necessarily have to make the decisions right there. You can always goback and reshoot it. — Keira Knightley