“Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision”
John Ashbery book Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror
Source: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
A collection of quotes on the topic of indecision, time, timing, making.
“Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision”
John Ashbery book Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror
Source: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
“Indecision may or may not be my problem.”
Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman
“Forgive my indecision. I am only a man.”
Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist
Lyrics, Morning View (2001)
“Once he makes up his mind, he's full of indecision.”
Oscar Levant (1906–1972) American comedian, composer, pianist and actor
On President Dwight D. Eisenhower, as quoted in The Nastiest Things Ever Said about Republicans (2006) by Martin Higgins, p. 83.
“Patience is decisive indecision.”
James Richardson (1950) American poet
#451
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)
“I don't do anything with my life except romanticize and decay with indecision.”
Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet
Source: The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems 1937-1952
“Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.”
Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness
Source: The Conquest of Happiness
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Part I: Man and Nature, Ch. 1: Current Perplexities, pp. 4–5
1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)
Context: Consider MacArthur and his Republican supporters. So limited is his intelligence and his imagination that he is never puzzled for one moment. All we have to do is to go back to the days of the Opium War. After we have killed a sufficient number of millions of Chinese, the survivors among them will perceive our moral superiority and hail MacArthur as a saviour. But let us not be one-sided. Stalin, I should say, is equally simple- minded and equally out of date. He, too, believes that if his armies could occupy Britain and reduce us all to the economic level of Soviet peasants and the political level of convicts, we should hail him as a great deliverer and bless the day when we were freed from the shackles of democracy. One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.
“And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And a hundred visions and revisions”
T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author
“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
T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Context: There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands,
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
“Indecision is the source of chaos."
- Paris Skyle(Allies of the Night)”
Darren Shan Allies of the Night
Source: Allies of the Night
Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
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
Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment), 492 U.S. 490 https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/492/490#writing-USSC_CR_0492_0490_ZC1, No. 88-605 ; decided July 3, 1989 <br class="br">1980s
Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise
Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 3: A Georgian Boyhood, Ch. 18: The Branching Ogham (p. 149)
Alicia Silverstone (1976) American actress
Interview with Barbara Ellen: The Observer, Sunday 29 February 2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2004/feb/29/features.review
Chaim Soutine (1893–1943) painter
quote in 1929
In a letter to his Paris art-dealer w:Léopold Zborowski, 1923; as quoted in Soutine, Monrou Wheeler, Museum of modern art, New York, 1950; p. 61
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician
Letter to Sir Austen Henry Layard (20 October 1861) on the American Civil War, quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 552.
1860s
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation and Empire (1952), Chapter 12 “Captain and Mayor”
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)
1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)
“There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.”
William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 4
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
E. A. Smith, ‘ Grey, Charles, second Earl Grey (1764–1845) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11526’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009, accessed 8 Sept 2012. <br class="br">About
Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter
Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona
“No good neurotic finds it difficult to be both opinionated and indecisive.”
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Neurotics and neurosis
Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)
Report on the Construction of Situations (1957)
Feels Like We Only Go Backwards, Lonerism (2012).
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Letter to Lord Grenville (9 November 1810), quoted in Rory Muir, Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1807-1815 (Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 136-137.
1810s
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man
Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 44
The Vocation of Man (1800), Knowledge
Steven Crowder (1987) American actor
Then again, I’m a grown man.<br>Like all great character assassination attempts, implication is much more effective than accusation.<br>Listen, I’m not somebody who really cares about polarization, political correctness or even what context can be fit into proper 40-character formatting. People can hold any opinion that they want on any subject that they choose. Just don’t proactively lie to people. It’s a simple request really, and one that we don’t hear nearly enough.<br>It’s for that same reason that I’d rather engage the president over his current policy failures than crazy conspiracy theories. By that same token, I would expect many of the HuffPo readers to hate me for plenty of things that I’ve actually said in the past as opposed to those made up by weak, lefty, online-commentating wieners.<br>Go ahead and take your foot off the “civility” gas pedal for all I care. We should all be replacing it with “honesty.” <br class="br">Source: 13 February 2012 on Huffington Post https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cpac-2012-rap-video_b_1273779
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
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer
This Mortal Mountain (p. 135)
Short fiction, The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories (1971)