Small Decisions Quotes & Sayings

Anyone who knows Western businesses, government agencies, or educational institutions knows that their managers make far too many small decisions as a rule. And nothing causes as much trouble in an organization as a lot of small decisions. — Peter F. Drucker

I would guess that the decision to create a small special purpose language or use an existing general purpose language is one of the toughest decisions that anyone facing the need for a new language must make. — Guido Van Rossum

Life turns on small choices.
A last-minute decision to take a shortcut over a snowy pass.
A shrugging dismissal of the odd-looking man in the long coat standing off to one side.
A decision to postpone a physical exam till a less busy time.
A word spoken with the best intentions.
Looking back, after the lives are destroyed, the blood spilt, the families shattered, and even the courses of nations changed forever, the mistakes that started the doomsday clock ticking down often seem minor, even innocent-even virtuous. So easy to make.
David Eller would give anything-no, everything-to go back and undo those mistakes. But life does not give us that chance. Like everyone else, he has no choice but to dangle from the hand of that clock, trying in vain to pull them backward as they tick inexorably toward zero. — William Carmichael

If just a few people make decisions about what this world looks like, what this country looks like, then you have people sitting in offices at major media outlets and Hollywood who think they can deal with a small group of people, to get them to jump through the hoops they want you to, — Rick Santorum

How many small decisions accumulate to form a habit? What a multitude of decisions, made by others, in other times, must shape our lives now. — Susan Griffin

Our truth-allergic, experience-addicted populace wants transformation but doesn't want the loss of freedom and control associated with submitting to authority within a committed community. Many "converts" seem to make decisions for Christ but soon lose their enthusiasm because they are offered quick programs for follow-up and small group fellowship rather than a lifelong, embodied experience of community. Many churches do not even have a process for becoming a member. As a result, converts' lives are often not visibly different from those in the culture around them. The older, more communal processes of traditional churches are better at bringing about a more thorough transformation of life. — Timothy Keller

Of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism' is the worst. People do what they want to do, every time. If it sometimes pains them to make a choice - if the choice turns out to look like a 'noble sacrifice' - you can be sure that it is in no wise nobler than the discomfort caused by greediness ... the unpleasant necessity of having to decide between two things both of which you would like to do when you can't do both. The ordinary bloke suffers that discomfort every day, every time he makes a choice between spending a buck on beer or tucking it away for his kids, between getting up when he's tired or spending the day in his warm bed and losing his job. No matter which he does he always chooses what seems to hurt least or pleasures most. The average chump spends his life harried by these small decisions. — Robert A. Heinlein

Success is the culmination of all the little moves, the small choices, the little decisions you make each day. You can do that. — Joseph Callaway

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

The measure of a man comes down to moments, spread out like dots of pain on the canvas on life. Everything you were, everything you'll someday be, resides in the small, seemingly ordinary choices of everyday life ... Each decision seems as insignificant as a left turn on an unfamiliar road when you have no destination in mind. But the decisions accumulate until you realize one day that they've made you the man that you are. — Kristin Hannah

When something terrible happens, a lifetime of small events and unremarkable decisions, of unresolved anger, and unexplored fears begins to play itself out in ways you least expect. You've been going along from one day to the next, not realizing that all those disparate words and gestures were adding up to something, a conclusion, you didn't anticipate. And later, when you begin to retrace your steps you see that you will need to reach back further than you could have imagined, beyond words and thoughts and even dreams, perhaps to make sense of what happened. — Christina Baker Kline

However, in the twenty-first century the majority of both men and women might lose their military and economic value. Gone is the mass conscription of the two world wars. The most advanced armies of the twenty-first century rely far more on cutting-edge technology. Instead of limitless cannon fodder, countries now need only small numbers of highly trained soldiers, even smaller numbers of special forces super-warriors and a handful of experts who know how to produce and use sophisticated technology. Hi-tech forces 'manned' by pilotless drones and cyber-worms are replacing the mass armies of the twentieth century, and generals delegate more and more critical decisions to algorithms. — Yuval Noah Harari

Life's journey does not take place down an easy roadway, as some might imagine. It takes place inside a giant house with a million doorways. Every day of our lives we are faced with decisions to make, doorways to walk through. It can be confusing at times, like walking through a carnival maze. Some decisions we make are big, some small, but they all have consequences.. — K. Martin Beckner

Life was just a collection of small decisions — Kiera Cass

Each moment we take some decisions & these small small decisions decides our future which will one day become our present.
We r ourselves responsible for our present & future. Now u will say that situations of our life r not in our hand. This is true but buddy situations only help us in shaping our attitude towards life. They never decides our future. — Chetan Suthar

[Julie] had lived a great deal among lies, before plumping for a small life of her own, a sincere and restricted life from which all pretense, even in matters sensual, was banished. How many crazy decisions and allegiances to successive aspects fo the truth! Had she not, one day when her costume for a fancy dress had demanded short hair, cut off the great chestnut mane that fell below her waist when she let it down? 'I could have hired a wig,' she thought. 'I might also, at a pinch, have passed the rest of my life with Becker or Espivant. If it comes to that, I could also have gone on stirring puddings in a saucepan at Carneilhan. The things "one might have done" are, in fact, the things one could not do ... — Colette

Among other grand achievements, F. A. Hayek had a remarkable career pointing out the flaws in collectivism. One of his keenest insights was that, paradoxically, any collectivist system necessarily depends on one individual (or small group) to make key social and economic decisions. In contrast, a system based on individualism takes advantage of the aggregate, or 'collective,' information of the whole society; through his actions each participant contributes his own particular, if incomplete, knowledge-information that could never be tapped by the individual at the head of a collectivist state. — Sheldon Richman

Probably the most pervasive false belief most of us harbor is the fallacy that only some superhuman act would have the power to turn our problems around. Nothing could be further from the truth. Life is cumulative. Whatever results we're experiencing in our lives are the accumulation of a host of small decisions we've made as individuals, as a family, as a community, as a society, and as a species. — Tony Robbins

When forecasting the outcomes of risky projects, executives too easily fall victim to the planning fallacy. In its grip, they make decisions based on delusional optimism rather than on a rational weighting of gains, losses, and probabilities. They overestimate benefits and underestimate costs. They spin scenarios of success while overlooking the potential for mistakes and miscalculations. As a result, they pursue initiatives that are unlikely to come in on budget or on time or to deliver the expected returns - or even to be completed. In this view, people often (but not always) take on risky projects because they are overly optimistic about the odds they face. I will return to this idea several times in this book - it probably contributes to an explanation of why people litigate, why they start wars, and why they open small businesses. — Daniel Kahneman

The only thing separating us from that existence rather than the one we find ourselves in is one small decision. I make wrong decisions every day. — Elizabeth Finn

If small groups are included in the decision-making process, then they should be allowed to make decisions. If an organization sets up teams and then uses them for purely advisory purposes, it loses the true advantage that a team has: namely, collective wisdom. — James Surowiecki

Your destiny is shaped by choice, never by chance. Beware the decisions you make, no matter how small, for they will be your salvation ... or your death. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

But more important than any of these was the vast, accretive weight of small things, from planes which hadn't crashed to men and women who had come to the correct place at the perfect time and thus founded generations. He saw kisses exchanged in doorways and wallets returned and men who had come to a splitting of the way and had chosen the right fork. He saw a thousand random meetings that weren't random, ten thousand right decisions, a hundred thousand right answers, a million acts of unacknowledged kindness ... For every brick that landed on the ground instead of some little kid's head, for every tornado that missed the trailer park, for every missile that didn't fly, for every hand stayed from violence, there was the Tower. — Stephen King

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

Here is what I'm trying to tell you: Adult isn't a noun, it's a verb. It's the act of making correctly those small decisions that fill our day. It is one that you can practice, and that can be done in concrete steps. And if you slip up and have Diet Coke for breakfast, no one busts in and snatches away your Adult card. Just move forward and have milk tomorrow. — Kelly Williams Brown

Knowing that conscious decisions and personal memory are much too small a place to live, every human being streams at night into the loving nowhere, or during the day, in some absorbing work. — Rumi

Big, sweeping life changes really boil down to small, everyday decisions. — Ali Vincent

The biggest considerations I had were practical: how do you move such a large number of actors around a small space? So, for example, if I have to have the mother bring a pot of tea from the kitchen to the living room and serve it to the others, how do I, on a practical level, get everyone into the frame? Any decisions I made about the camera angles or movement came out of necessity, versus any sort of stylistic choice. — Hirokazu Koreeda

Consider every choice carefully, no matter how small, for it will affect the bigger decisions you make. — Jim George

It's hard to know how people select a course in life," Amos said. "The big choices we make are practically random. The small choices probably tell us more about who we are. Which field we go into may depend on which high school teacher we happen to meet. Who we marry may depend on who happens to be around at the right time of life. On the other hand, the small decisions are very systematic. That I became a psychologist is probably not very revealing. What kind of psychologist I am may reflect deep traits. — Michael Lewis

If you keep little decisions small - then big decisions will even be smaller. — Art Hochberg

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

It is not so much the major events as the small day-to-day decisions that map the course of our living ... Our lives are, in reality, the sum total of our seemingly unimportant decisions and of our capacity to live by those decisions. — Gordon B. Hinckley

The history of socialism offers a twofold lesson: the fall of the collective as a transforming agent of everyday life, and the rise of technology and its problems. Given this twofold experience, and given that the idea of a revolutionary transformation of the everyday has almost vanished, the withdrawal into an everyday which has not been transformed but which has benefited from a small proportion of technical progress becomes perfectly understandable. No, what is most astonishing is perhaps the fact that this withdrawal has in no way stopped collective organization and overorganization continuing to operate on its own level: the state, important decisions, bureaucracy. 'Reprivatized' life has its own level, and the large institutions have theirs. These levels are juxtaposed or superimposed. — Henri Lefebvre

Train your staff (if you have any) to be always helpful, courteous, and knowledgeable. Most importantly, give every member of your staff enough information and power to make those small customer-pleasing decisions, so he never has to say, "I don't know, but so-and-so will be back at ... " — Susan Ward

It has been said that the door of history turns on small hinges, and so do people's lives. We are constantly making small decisions. The outcome determines the success or failure of our lives. That is why it is worthwhile to look ahead, to set a course, and at least be partly ready when the moment of decision comes. True finishers have the capacity to visualize their objective. — Thomas S. Monson

People tend to think that big things only happen to big people ... I think that is not true. The small decisions we make every day define who we are and define the world around us ... But I bet to you there is a decision every day in your life where you affect somebody else. — Guillermo Del Toro

Every choice is yours. You and you alone bear the responsibility of your decisions. No matter how great or small they may be. - THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA — T.R. Williams

A number of small decisions, each appearing insignificant in the moment and made in isolation of one another, can result in a negative outcome. — Vince Molinaro

We lose the fear of making decisions, great and small; as we realize that should our choice prove wrong we can, if we will, learn from the experience. — Bill W.

They needed to be an independent state, sovereign perhaps, semiautonomous at least. Semiautonomy might be enough, given the realities of the two worlds; semiautonomy would justify calling it a free Mars. But in the current state of things they were no more than property, and had no real power over their own lives. Decisions were made for them a hundred million kilometers away. Their home was being chopped up into metal bits and shipped away. It was a waste, it benefited no one except a small metanational elite who were running the two worlds like feudal fiefdoms. No, they needed to be free - and not so that they could cast loose from Earth's terrible situation, not at all - rather, to be able to exert some real influence over what was happening down there. Otherwise they were only going to be helpless witnesses to catastrophe. And then sucked down into the maelstrom after the first sets of victims. That was intolerable. They had to act. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Regardless of your age, you can make better choices in the moment. Small decisions - about how you eat, move, and sleep each day - count more than you think. As I have learned from personal experience, these choices shape your life. — Tom Rath

We never know where life is going to lead, Ethan. What so many small decisions are going to add up to. — Ali Standish

Life is long and full of an infinite number of decisions. I have to think that the small ones don't matter, that I'll end up where I need to end up no matter what I do. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

So much hangs on the decisions of a small number of poorly educated people." "That's democracy." Gus smiled. "A terrible way to run a country, but every other system is worse. — Ken Follett

There are many ways of encouraging people to make life better other than joining a political party. Politics with a small 'p' isn't just about darkened committee rooms, endless meetings - it is about giving people the right to make decisions about our lives. — John Reid

The small day-to-day decisions will determine the course of your lives. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Is is in the small decisions you and I make every day that create our destiny. — Tony Robbins

When you go through a process of #1 praying daily and staying in God's word #2 obey Him in the small decisions every day #3 ask advice from a number of spiritual counselors then you can step out peacefully knowing that pleasing God is all that matters. America was built on this attitude. — Mary Engelbreit

It is said that history turns on small hinges. A human career, too, results from an accumulating series of decisions about large and small matters over a period of years. But the catch is that you can never know when a seemingly small decision may prove to be, from the vantage of later years, the big decision of your life. — Norman Vincent Peale

One writer said that the door of history turns on small hinges, and so do people's lives. If we were to apply that maxim to our lives, we could say that we are the result of many small decisions. In effect, we are the product of our choices. We must develop the capacity to recall the past, to evaluate the present, and to look into the future in order to accomplish in our lives what the Lord would have us do. — Thomas S. Monson

The days pile up and weigh small decisions down, don't they? That decision not to visit. The first few days slide by easy enough; anger and youth power them along. But then they pile up like unrecycled trash. — Hugh Howey

But that's the beauty of boarding school. I make all my own decisions, small and medium, while the big ones are left up to the Prefect Academy - and as far as boys go, to the only expert I know - Suzanne Santry — Adriana Trigiani

In the middle of the cavernous cargo hold was a simple, aluminum coffin with a small American flag draped over it. We were bringing another American soldier, just killed, home to his family and final resting place. The starkness of his coffin in the center of the hold, the silence except for the din of the engines, was a real time cold reminder of the consequences of decisions for which we Senators share responsibility. — John F. Kerry

I don't always make the best decisions, I don't always take the best advice, I don't always let the "small things" roll off, but I always try. — Emma Paul

A high percentage of organisations develop a military rationale, whereby only a very small number of people make all of the decisions. There is little wonder, then, that people aren't keen to get out of bed and come to work on a Monday morning. — Ricardo Semler

That image of a chessboard - an epic contest between two giant players, carefully nudging their pieces around the globe as part of a grand strategy - has indeed become a familiar metaphor for the Cold War. But it is misleading. Many decisions remembered today for their farsighted, tactical brilliance were denounced in their day as weak-willed. And big, public gestures often made less difference than the small, hidden ones. — Sam Tanenhaus

You make many small decisions as you drive your car, absorb some information as you read the newspaper, and conduct routine exchanges of pleasantries with a spouse or a colleague, all with little effort and no strain. Just like a stroll. — Daniel Kahneman

Small decisions made over times make big impacts. — Vishwas Chavan

Character is distilled out of our daily confrontation with temptation, out of our regular response to the call of duty. It is formed as we learn to cherish principles and to submit to self-discipline. Character is the sum total of all the little decisions, the small deeds, the daily reactions to the choices that confront us. Character is not obtained instantly. We have to mold and hammer and forge ourselves into character. It is a distant goal to which there is no shortcut. — Sidney Greenberg

The course of history is determined not by battles, by sieges, or usurpation, but by the individuals. The strongest army is, at its most basic level, a collection of individuals. Their decisions, their passions, their foolishness, and their dreams shape the years to come. If there is any lesson to be learned from history, it is that all too often the fate of armies, of cities, of entire realms rests upon the actions of one person's decision, good or bad, right or wrong, big or small, can unwittingly change the world.
But history can be quite the slattern. One never knows who that person is, where he might be, or what decision he might male.
It is almost enough to make me believe in destiny. — Jim Butcher

In 'Tintin,' it's like a live-action role. You're living and breathing and making decisions for that character from page 1 to page 120, the whole emotional arc. In an animated movie, it's a committee decision. There are 50 people creating that character. You're responsible for a small part. — Andy Serkis

The other people in your life are going to make decisions based on what they want in their life. Always. Even when it seems like they are interested in you, even when they genuinely do care about you, they are still going to make their decisions based on what works best for them. So you have to figure out what works for you. What will get you where you want to be. Then make sure any decision you make, no matter how small, will take you toward it. — Violet Howe

Someone once told me it's more important what you turn down than what you take, and I think that rings true, especially when you're trying to make decisions about how you want to be viewed. It's hard, because I also want to have fun, and if there's a project that's super-small or low-budget or silly but it happens to have friends involved, I'll always take it, because my number-one priority is that I want to have fun with my career. — Kristen Bell

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

Fate is strange, and our destinies can be shaped by very small decisions. — Emily Rodda

Once again I am being held hostage for my vagina," She sighs. "What is it with you aliens? Can't a girl just make her own decisions for once? Is that so freaking hard?"
"The khui has decided," I tell her.
She gives a small shake of her head. "It's always someone else's decision. When's it going to be mine?"
I watch her, frustrated. There is no decision to be made. The khui has decided. And yet... I don't like the way her words make me feel.
Or the defeat in her voice. Liz is a fighter. I don't want her to give up. — Ruby Dixon

Judaism calls for us to honor the rhythm of human life, the demands of the human community around us, the call of the divine order as the filter and scale for the decisions that drive our own small lives. We do not rule the universe, Judaism reminds us. God does. We are not its standard or its norms. We are only its keepers, its agents, its stewards. To do right by the universe at large is the measure of a happiness framed with the entire cosmos in mind but lived in microcosms across time. — Joan D. Chittister

Even the early droplets of selfish decisions suggest a direction. Then the little inflecting rivulets come, merging into small brooks and soon into larger streams; finally one is swept along by a vast river which flows into the "gulf of misery and endless wo" (Hel. 5:12). — Neal A. Maxwell

Probably around 14, when I was finishing primary school. I'm coming from a pretty small city in Croatia, not too many options to train, not too many players. So I had to either choose to stay at home to do more school or move to Zagreb to the national training center. That was when I made decisions to do something better in tennis. — Marin Cilic

We hardly ever know the decisions we make that change our lives, mostly because they are the small ones — Rachel Hawkins

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

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

Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions - and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large. — Thomas Sowell

We need to reach the millions who live in cities, the hundreds of thousands in industrial centers, the tens of thousands in medium-sized towns, the thousands in small towns, and the hundreds in villages
all these at once. Like a volcanic eruption, a spiritual revolution needs to spread through the country, to spur people to crucial decisions. People have to recognize the futility of splitting life up into politics, economics, the humanities, and religion. We must be awakened to a life in which all of these things are completely integrated. — Eberhard Arnold

We might compare each day's decisions with the work of steering a boat. Our efforts will result in nebulous confusion if we make a wrong move at any point, even if it's only a small tack to the side. We absolutely cannot afford carelessness, lest we risk becoming lost ourselves. — Hideo Kojima

There are places in life that seep into your soul, becoming forever a part of it. You need encounter such places only once for your life to be unsuspectingly, and perhaps subtly, altered. Profound conversations and transcendental decisions are found in such places, moments forever inhabiting the deepest corners of memory: a bench in a remote park, a dark street corner, a small plaza, a doorstep. They are there, these places, in the soul, to be called up when one's ability to carry on, to persevere, is tested. — Jaume Sanllorente

He raised a hand in response and tossed the ear of corn into the wagon. Then he
returned to his fantasy, imagining himself running the livery instead of working there, making the decisions, placing orders, selecting new horses, agreeing to board others, and
hiring a boy to muck out the stalls and pitch hay.
In his daydream, he no longer lived in the back room. He came home at night to a small house he'd bought with his earnings. Inside, a woman waited for him. A wife. In his fantasy her hair was as golden as the ear of corn he tossed into the wagon and her
eyes as blue as the cloudless sky overhead. Catherine smiled at him and he could hear as well as see her say his name. "Jim! Welcome home. — Bonnie Dee

Most reasons to delay are invalid if you get right to the core: no time, no money, no audience. These are all future concerns, which make it hard to start anything. Worry about those things later or not at all. Make small decisions at first, and start moving in a direction that feels right. — Paul Jarvis

A challenge always is good. Normal design does not come under the constraints of a small budget and time frame. But it has helped me to make quick and knowledgeable decisions. — Douglas Wilson

While Washington pays lip service to the challenges facing small businesses, it repeatedly chooses its own expansion over results. In effect, government has become a huge silent partner in all businesses, often taking a majority of the profits and forcing many unprofitable business decisions without the risk that it will be fired. — David Malpass

I think the knowledge about how legislation really affects small businesses is extremely valuable. If you haven't run a small business, then you don't have this kind of knowledge about how a regulation passed or taxes increased affects your bottom line. If you recognize that every new regulation takes that much more time to comply with, requires that many more employees, then it really gives you that foundational basis to make those decisions. — Kristi Noem

We, the present-day political leaders, are called upon to take responsibility for making joint decisions upon which the prosperity of future generations will heavily depend. Serbia may be a small country yet, through partner cooperation with others, it can confront all challenges and address problems that overcome its capacities. — Tomislav Nikolic

The first is that seemingly small features of social situations can have massive effects on people's behavior; nudges are everywhere, even if we do not see them. Choice architecture, both good and bad, is pervasive and unavoidable, and it greatly affects our decisions. The second claim is that libertarian paternalism is not an oxymoron. Choice architects can preserve freedom of choice while also nudging people in directions that will improve their lives. — Richard H. Thaler

Is it possible that
we 'hate' politics because we have forgotten its specifi c and limited
nature, its overwhelming value, and also its innate fragility? Could it be
that our expectations are so high that politics appears almost destined
to disappoint? Democratic politics cannot make 'every sad heart glad',
as Crick argued, nor did it ever promise to do so. But not always
getting what you want, an awareness that public governance is often
slow and bureaucratic, a frustration that some decisions are hard to
understand or have to be made in secret, disbelief and anger at the selfinterested
behaviour of a small number of politicians, and an acceptance
that some people will always take out more from the system than
they put in - these are the prices you pay for living in a democracy. — Matthew Flinders

Most people think small because they are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. — Donald J. Trump

I think I went through my phase of feeling sort of invisible when I left my small hometown in Canada and moved to the big city of Vancouver. I kind of had to decide right there in that moment what I was going to do with the rest of my life and make a thousand decisions after finishing high school. Fortunately, I chose acting. — Justin Chatwin

There's a small amount of super-wealthy people that want to maintain their billions and billions of dollars. Those are the people who are really making the decisions. — Conor Oberst

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. — Donald Trump

Harry has heard this before. Thelma's voice is dutiful and deliberately calm, issuing small family talk when both know that what she wants to discuss is her old issue, that flared up a minute ago, of whether he loves her or not, or why at least he doesn't need her as much as she does him. But their relationship at the start was established with her in pursuit of him, and all the years since, of hidden meetings, of wise decisions to end it and thrilling abject collapses back into sex, have not disrupted the fundamental pattern of her giving and his taking, of her fearing their end more than he, and clinging, and disliking herself for clinging, and wanting to punish him for her dislike, and him shrugging and continuing to bask in the sun of her love, that rises every day whether he is there or not. He can't believe it, quite, and has to keep testing her. — John Updike

Every brush stroke on the canvas, every dab of color introduced, the fine textures impressed in the paint - this accumulation of many small acts combines to shape a final work of art. And so it is with life; each step, each deed, each brief choice builds gradually, day by day, to shape both character and destiny. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Anything is possible - even the most far-fetched idea can come to being through a series of seemingly small decisions and actions. — Kandyse McClure

She often thought about the power everybody had to ruin everybody else. You could do it by accident, just by showing up, or you could make the wrong decisions in such small pieces that by the time you realized what you were doing, it was too late. — Rosalie Knecht

In every universe, we play out different decisions we've made for whatever reason. What breaks one person at one time can make them strong at another. And one small variable can have devastating consequences. Timing is everything, kid. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

History is often the tale of small moments - chance encounters or casual decisions or sheer coincidence - that seem of little consequence at the time, but somehow fuse with other small moments to produce something momentous, the proverbial flapping of a butterfly's wings that triggers a hurricane. — Scott Anderson

The small choices and decisions we make a hundred times a day add up to determining the kind of world we live in. — Harold S. Kushner

My paintings are the result of countless small brushstrokes, each one shaded with a different blend of colors, each one with a single, deliberate purpose. Every moment, every day, we are all making something - whether it's science or art, a relationship or a destiny - building it choice by choice, moment by moment. Our decisions shape other people's worlds as well as our own. We are all the center of our own universe and all of use in someone else's orbit. It's a paradox, but sometimes paradoxes are where truth begins.
My father would point out that the Beatles told us all of this decades ago. They one sang that in the end, the love we take is equal to the love we make. No, we can never be in complete control of our fates - we're all vulnerable to accidents, to cruelty, and to the random misfortune of life. But I try to think about how much of it is up to us. We decide what emotions serve as our building blocks, which feelings we'll use to shape our universe. — Claudia Gray

The decisions we make lead us to complex behavioral sets, and what we decide to do can be consciously and unconsciously motivated. The human being, however, is a small-group decision-making animal, a small pack animal, with a will to life, who engages in sex and the food quest to propagate and maintain that life, and who needs acceptance and recognition from group members. — John Rush