“The pretext for indecisiveness is commonly mature deliberation; but in reality indecisive men occupy themselves less in deliberation than others; for to him who fears to decide, deliberation (which has a foretaste of that fear) soon becomes intolerably irksome, and the mind escapes from the anxiety of it into alien themes.”

Source: The Statesman (1836), Ch. 21. p. 144

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The pretext for indecisiveness is commonly mature deliberation; but in reality indecisive men occupy themselves less in…" by Henry Taylor?

Henry Taylor33

English playwright and poet 1800–1886

Related quotes

“What is fear after all? It is indecision. You seek some way to resist, escape. There is none.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Source: The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

“Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It is vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Source: kniha Michelle Obama - Becoming

“A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him. “Neither do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on the stand.” … The bushel may be the fear of men, or perhaps deliberate conformity to the world for some ulterior motive.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

exegesis of Matthew 5:13, p. 118.
Discipleship (1937), The Visible Community

“The sentiment 'everything that is happening is supposed to be happening' can be a cop out that prevents us from becoming conscious and deliberately creating. On the other hand, the obsessive control over our reality that comes with trying to use the law of attraction to our advantage to deliberately create can be nothing more than resistance. It too can prevent us from being conscious.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

§ 9.13 : Conclusion, Pt. 1
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751)

“Such-like deaths, which are deliberately inflicted with a resolved and desperate courage, cannot be avoided by princes, because any one who does not fear to die can inflict them.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 19; translated by W. K. Marriot

“Conversely, a shallow, quick breath only half-nourishes, and is the partner of fear, nervousness and self-consciousness; whilst the uneven uncontrolled breath allows the person to become ‘beside themselves* with the emotional disturbance and indecision.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter XV The Essential Science of Breathing

“Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment of men by other men.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Source: 1960s–1970s, The Constitution of Liberty (1960), p. 99.

“It becomes all men, Senators, who deliberate on dubious matters, to be influenced neither by hatred, affection, anger, nor pity.”
Omnes homines, patres conscripti, qui de rebus dubiis consultant, ab odio, amicitia, ira atque misericordia vacuos esse decet.

Sallust (-86–-34 BC) Roman historian, politician

Source: Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter LI, section 1

“There is nothing which rots morale more quickly and more completely than poor communication and indecisiveness - the feeling that those in authority do not know their own minds. And there is no condition which more quickly produces a sense of indecision among subordinates or more effectively hampers communication than being responsible to a superior who has too wide a span of control.”

Lyndall Urwick (1891–1983) British management consultant

Source: 1950s, The pattern of management, 1956, p. 43; cited in: Colin Combe (2014), Introduction to Management, p.118

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Henry Taylor33

Related quotes

Related topics