Quotes about the decision
page 15

“Italy, we know, has been tied since 1949 to the United States in the Atlantic Alliance; and since 1949, there has been some strong resistance inside the Christian Democracy toward such a decisive, entangling, and suffocating involvement of our country with the United States. The most significant resistance to the Atlantic Alliance was perhaps not that of the great parliamentary protest mounted by the Communist and Socialist parties, but the subtler, more decisive, more pregnant, and more enduring resistance of certain sectors of the Christian Democracy who did not want to hitch Italy to the chariot of an unequal alliance, in which the scepter of com¬mand remained in the hands of the United States, but rather thought about the possibility of a neutralist policy for Italy”

Nico Perrone (1935) Italian historian and writer

Source: The Strategic Stakes in Mattei's Flight, p. 23

Democracy, Strong, Country

“To be sure, we have to face at this point an important question; but it is a practical, not a theoretical question; it is the question of whether or not to accept the new linguistic forms. The acceptance cannot be judged as being either true or false because it is not an assertion. It can only be judged as being more or less expedient, fruitful, conducive to the aim for which the language is intended. Judgments of this kind supply the motivation for the decision of accepting or rejecting the kind of entities.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Source: Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology (1950), Ch. 3. What does acceptance of a kind of entities mean?

Motivation, Question, Falseness

“The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński book The Grand Chessboard

Conclusion, p. 198.
The Grand Chessboard (1997)

“Earlier today we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. ‘We the people.’ It is a very eloquent beginning. But, when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that ‘We, the people.’ I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But, through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in ‘We, the people.”

Barbara Jordan (1936–1996) American politician

Statement before the House Judiciary Committee considering impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon (25 July 1974). (See External links)

People

“Such a stupid act. Sometimes heroics revolted him; they seemed like an insult to the soldier who weighed the risks of the situation and made calm, cunning decisions based on experience and imagination, the sort of unshowy soldiering that didn’t win medals but wars.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter VIII (p. 183).

War, Stupidity, Imagination

“From gadgets to social networks to video games, the decision not to embrace the newest technology is a choice to be out of the mainstream.”

Noam Cohen (1999) American journalist

Noam, Cohen, The New York Times, We're All Nerds Now, September 13, 2014, October 29, 2014 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/sunday-review/were-all-nerds-now.html,

Game

“All strategical decisions in France are made by a non-French unelected oligarchy. The French political stage is a puppet theater, which explains the growing lack of interest for politics, among the French people.”

François Asselineau (1957) French politician

Un petit candidat contre la grande Europe, Nord-Eclair (February 2012) http://www.nordeclair.fr/Locales/Villeneuve-d-Ascq/2012/02/29/un-petit-candidat-contre-la-grande-europ.shtml French politics

People

“Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man — war, poverty, and tyranny — and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Acceptance speech, Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois (26 July 1952)

Pain, War, People, Truth

“Complete, at the same time, was his confidence in his own judgment when it spoke to him decisively. He was one of those few that could believe and know as well as inquire and be of opinion. When I remember how much he admired intellectual force, how much he had of it himself, and yet how unconsciously and contentedly he gave others credit for superiority, I again see the healthy spirit of the genuine man.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Confidence, Time

“Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next - a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please - your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this "decision" and believe that you are in the process of making it.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), p. 9

Freedom, Appearance, Time

“At least Alzheimer's patients do not know what is happening to their brains and bodies. Some say this makes Alzheimer's less terrible than ALS, where the patient understands everything. But if lack of comprehension is of some small blessing to the Alzheimer's victim, it does nothing to help the family. Care of the stricken spouse or parent can consume a family's time, energy and resources. Instead of enjoying retirement years, a husband or wife, whose own strength may be declining with age, can find every day consumed by care giving. Then there is the wrenching decision of whether to place the loved one in a nursing home, a decision that can result in enormous cost, not to mention guilt.”

John Danforth (1936) American politician

Page 95
Faith and Politics (2006)

Love, Age, Family, Home

“Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force. And I assure you, this will not be a campaign of half measures, and we will accept no outcome but victory.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Invasion of Iraq (March 2003)

Way, Victory

“The alphas are the most important members because they are the decision makers and without them the pack is leaderless. So their survival is paramount. If food is scarce, they will eat first and they may be the only ones who do eat. Other members of the pack will go hungry, even the pups, and starve if necessary. And the rest of the pack knows better than to touch something that has the beta's scent on it.”

Shaun Ellis (1977) American football player, defensive end

The Man who lives with Wolves (2010)

Food

“In Iran, no-one can ignore the tragic record of the revolution. Over the past three decades some six million Iranians have fled their homeland. The Iran-Iraq war claimed almost a million lives on both sides. During the first four years of the Khomeinist regime alone 22,000 people were executed, according to Amnesty International. Since then, the number of executions has topped 80,000. More than five million people have spent some time in prison, often on trumped-up charges. In terms of purchasing power parity, the average Iranian today is poorer than he was before the revolution. De-Khomeinization does not mean holding the late ayatollah solely responsible for all that Iran has suffered just as Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, and Fidel Castro shared the blame with others in their respective countries. However, there is ample evidence that Khomeini was the principal source of the key decisions that led to tragedy… Memoirs and interviews and articles by dozens of Khomeini’s former associates—including former Presidents Abol-Hassan Banisadr and Hashemi Rafsanjani and former Premier Mehdi Bazargan—make it clear that he was personally responsible for some of the new regime’s worst excesses. These include the disbanding of the national army, the repression of the traditional Shi’ite clergy, and the creation of an atmosphere of terror, with targeted assassinations at home and abroad. Khomeini has become a symbol of what went wrong with Iran’s wayward revolution. De-Khomeinization might not spell the end of Iran’s miseries just as de-Stalinization and de-Maoization initially produced only minimal results. However, no nation can plan its future without coming to terms with its past.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Opinion: Iran must confront its past to move forwards" http://www.aawsat.net/2015/02/article55341173, Ashraq Al-Awsat (February 6, 2015).

War, People, Home, Suffering

“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 (1971) South Dakota politician

Miller, Emily. Rep. Kristi Noem: Head of the Class http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=41749, Human Events, February 14, 2011.

Business, Knowledge, Thinking, Time

“Innovative e-business projects start with a design of the e-business model. We often encounter the view, in research as well as industry practice, that an e-business model is similar to a business process model, and so can be specified using UML activity diagrams or Petri nets. In this paper, we explain why this is a misunderstanding. The root cause is that a business model is not about process but about value exchanged between actors. Failure to make this separation of concerns leads to poor business decision-making and inadequate business requirements.”

Hans van Vliet (1949) Dutch computer scientist

Jaap Gordijn, Hans Akkermans, and Hans Van Vliet. "Business modelling is not process modelling." International Conference on Conceptual Modeling. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2000. Abstract

Failure, Business

“There are in the final analysis, two kinds of decisions. One, decisions you make for yourself and two decisions other people make for you, whether it's one tyrant or 51% of your fellow citizens.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011), Q&A

People

“Why would Hillary not want to say, ‘I’m going to get to the bottom of this and these women deserve to be heard. And I’m gonna listen to every one of these women. And I’m gonna make a decision after I hear everything that they have to say. And at that point in time I will make a decision.’ But she never has come to any of these women to see if her husband did what he did to them. And you know she don’t want to. Because she knows it’s true. But why wouldn’t she do that? If she was a woman who’s as out there, oh, to support all women and all women have a right to be heard. And she has the nerve to run for the presidency of the United States and run for all women and to be for all women.”

Paula Jones (1966) American intern

Paula Jones: The Truth About Bill’s Women Would ‘Destroy’ Hillary’s Political Career https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/03/08/exclusive-paula-jones-the-truth-about-bills-women-would-destroy-hillarys-political-career/ (March 8, 2016)

Women, Support, Time

“Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of killing unwanted babies, it’s just that the idea of letting women make a decision doesn’t sit well with me.”

Zach Braff (1975) American actor, director, screenwriter, producer

Love, Women, Idea, Baby

“Through the consolidation of basic production and the institution of a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and the other countries that join, this proposal represents the first concrete step towards a European federation, imperative for the preservation of peace.”

Jean Monnet (1888–1979) French political economist regarded by many as a chief architect of European unity

Speech by Robert Schuman (9 May 1950), written by Monnet
Jean Monnet 1888-1979

Peace, Country

“The philosophy of science is concerned with how you decide if a scientific finding is correct or true. You have to establish criteria to determine if the finding or theory is valid. Validity is a fundamental problem in the philosophy of science, but the fundamental problem in the philosophy of scientific administration is the question of value. Two scientific activities are equally valid if they achieve results that are true. Now, how do you decide which activity is more valuable? The question of value is the basic question that the scientific administrator asks so that decisions can be made about funding priorities.”

Alvin M. Weinberg (1915–2006) American nuclear physicist

Interview http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev28-1/text/wbgbar.htm by Bill Cabage and Carolyn Krause for the ORNL Review (April 1995).

Question, Problem, Science

“America has no obligation to let you bring products into this nation without tariff or impost while you exploit the existence of authoritarian governments and environmental arbitrage. A 100% tariff on all of Apple's foreign-produced or assembled products should make the decision easy …”

Karl Denninger American businessman

Apple (and America's) Chinese Slave Labor Problem http://financialsense.com/contributors/karl-denninger/2012/01/23/apple-and-america-chinese-slave-labor-problem in Financial Sense (23 January 2012)

“It needs but very little consideration to reach the conclusion that all of these terms are relative, not absolute, in their application to the affairs of this earth. There is no absolute and complete sovereignty for a State, nor absolute and complete independence and freedom for an individual. It happened in 1861 that the States of the North and the South were so fully agreed among themselves that they were able to combine against each other. But supposing each State of the Union should undertake to make its own decisions upon all questions, and that all held divergent views. If such a condition were carried to its logical conclusion, each would come into conflict with all the others, and a condition would arise which could only result in mutual destruction. It is evident that this would be the antithesis of State sovereignty. Or suppose that each individual in the assertion of his own independence and freedom undertook to act in entire disregard of the rights of others. The end would be likewise mutual destruction, and no one would be independent and no one would be free. Yet these are conflicts which have gone on ever since the organization of society into government, and they are going on now. To my mind this was fundamental of the conflict which broke out in 1861.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Question, Freedom

“I am especially worried about the impact that investor-state-arbitrations (ISDS) have already had and foreseeably will have on human rights, in particular the provision which allows investors to challenge domestic legislation and administrative decisions if these can potentially reduce their profits.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

U.N. expert says secret trade deals threaten human rights http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/23/trade-rights-idUSL5N0XK54G20150423?feedType=RSS&feedName=everything&virtualBrandChannel=11563. 2015

“Once a paratrooper, always a paratrooper. That’s how Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf could be described in the wake of his decision over the weekend to suspend the Constitution and impose a state of emergency. He has always managed to shoot his way out of tight corners in the past. But will the tactic work this time?… In 1999, Musharraf came to power through a coup and didn’t impose martial law. Eight years later, he has opted for a second coup, this time with the iron fist – a biting comment on his own performance in office.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Musharraf's coup: What to do" http://nypost.com/2007/11/07/musharrafs-coup-what-to-do/, New York Post (November 7, 2007). New York Post

Law, Way, Time, Past

“That’s a political decision. Finland has full control of its borders”

Timo Soini (1962) Finnish politician

Norway has adopted firmer methods than Finland to deal with the arrival of asylum seekers via its Arctic border with Russia. The country has effectively sealed the border to prevent further arrivals. Reporters asked Soini why Finland doesn’t do the same, quoted on Yle.Fi, "Foreign Minister Soini: Organised crime behind Russian border crossings" http://yle.fi/uutiset/foreign_minister_soini_organised_crime_behind_russian_border_crossings/8618228, February 22, 2016

“We sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we kept our best weapons in their silos. Even now, we're standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive because we've declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies, more moral, more civilized. Our image is at stake, we insist.
But we didn't come this far because we are made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and into this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. Yes, that was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on, to grab this land from whomever, and we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves.
And so it goes with most great nation-states, which feeling guilty about their savage pasts, eventually civilize themselves out of business, and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry, up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy.”

Paul Harvey (1918–2009) American broadcaster

Commenting on historical military and social policies, during his ABC News broadcast (23 June 2005); quoted in "Agression Dominates the Airwaves" by Saul Landau, at Transnational Institute (19 July 2005) http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=1859&username=guest@tni.org&password=9999&publish=Y.

Men, Way, Feeling, Business

“I reject that number completely, that people die in America because of lack of health insurance. People die in America because people die in America. And people make poor decisions with respect to their health and their healthcare. And they don’t go to the emergency room or they don’t go to the doctor when they need to.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

2011-12-06
Santorum: No One Has Ever Died Because They Didn’t Have Health Care
David
Badash
The New Civil Rights Movement
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/santorum-no-one-has-ever-died-because-they-didnt-have-health-care/politics/2011/12/06/31304

People, Health

“Saying ‘yes’ to major life decisions when inside you are crying out to say ‘no’ is more serious. Doing the opposite of what you feel is right can destroy your chances of achieving your dreams and goals. I have coached too many people who regret going with the flow on major life decisions and now need help living with the consequences.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Life, People, Dreams, Feeling

“There are two things to remember. If the President is asked to do something against the Constitution, the mere fact that the Cabinet has reiterated its earlier decision may not be binding on him. If it is an administrative matter, then the reaffirmation of the earlier decision by the Cabinet will, of course, be binding. But no government and no Cabinet can ask the President to do something that is unconstitutional. So, this line of distinction will have to be drawn.”

R. Venkataraman (1910–2009) seventh Vice-President of India and the 8th President of India

On the issue of Constitutional right - if Constitutionally was it right of the President not to give the Cabinet recommendation.
The Rediff Interview/R Venkataraman

“There's no doubt you smoke to calm yourself. I know I do. That's my decision about how I keep calm. I prefer that to Prozac. In fact I think it's healthier. I couldn't go to another New York party where they're all drinking water and on Prozac and telling you off for smoking.”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

Interview with Marion Finlay, "Hockney on … politics, pleasure, and smoking in public places," FOREST Online (28 July 2004)
2000s

Drink, Thinking, Water

“In hindsight, I have come to believe the discovery of the tapes may prove to be an historic event in more than one way. At a time when the United States government acknowledges that 2 million conversations were overheard by authorized eavesdroppers in a twelve month period, and at least an equal number were being recorded by private dectecies, suspicious spouses, corporate spies, special agents, and blackmailers; at a time when people like me conduct their lives under the assumption that their telephone lines are tapped; and at a time when devices such as the bug-in-the-martini-olive are proliferating, the disastrous consequences that flowed from Nixon’s fateful decision to record White House conversations may serve to awaken the nation to the threat posed to the little privacy that remains to us.”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

page 92
At That Point in Time, Tapes and the threat of wiretapping

Fate, People, Way, Time

“The soldier and the army, not Parliamentary majorities and decisions, have welded the German Empire together. I put my trust in the army.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Speech (18 April 1891), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 158
1890s

“I always felt, in looking at [the Cuban] situation, that it was wrong. And I now know why. It came to me one night in Mexico. China is communist, the same as Cuba, and yet we have no problem trading with China. In fact, today we can't get over there quick enough. The difference is simple: China welcomes our corporations. Cuba threw them out. It's a basic decision of corporate America: We will punish Cuba because Castro stuck it to us by nationalizing everything after he came to power. What other reason could there be? China is far more powerful but we now welcome them into global trade with open arms—as we should—while we continue this bitter, hostile policy towards Cuba. It must be because there are still people alive in the corporate world who got hammered by Fidel's revolution.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 6 (p. 111)

Hostility, People, World, Problem

“I married my best friend. I was still in awe after more than four years of being around her at how smart and strong and loving and caring she was. And I really hoped that her choosing me and rejecting my advice to pursue her own career was a decision she would never regret.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

2010s, (July 26, 2016)

Love, Hope, Strong

“I get scared all the time. I try not to let it have any impact on the decision of whether to do it or not. I think you can separate yourself from your fears. You know what you should do, and it’s just scary to do it. But I’d hate to let the fact that I’m scared to do it make me not do it. It ends up defining you.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Reported in Eddy Lawrence, " Josh Homme: Interview http://www.timeout.com/london/music/features/4199/Josh_Homme-interview.html", Time Out London (February 5, 2008).

Hate, Fear, Thinking, Time

“But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know — fiction.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (2006)

Love, People, Making love, Family

“Decision control is measured by the degree to which any one of the participants may unilaterally determine the outcome of the dispute. For example, where a third-party decisionmaker alone may order a resolution to be imposed, the decision-maker has total decision control. Control over the process refers to control over the development and selection of information that win constitute the basis for resolving the dispute.”

John Thibaut (1917–1986) American social psychologist

Source: "A theory of procedure." 1978, p. 546

“Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and, um, be faithful in what happens.”

Britney Spears (1981) American singer, dancer and actress

CNN interview with Tucker Carlson (3 September 2003); later used in Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) by Michael Moore. CNN interview with Tucker Carlson http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/03/cnna.spears/ (3 September 2003)

Faith, Support, Thinking

“Our moral and economic system is based on individual responsibility. It’s based on the idea that people have to live with the consequences of their decisions. This makes them more careful deciders. This means that society tends toward justice — people get what they deserve as much as possible.”

David Brooks (1961) American journalist, commentator and editor

David Brooks. "Money for Idiots," http://archive.li/EzXTi The New York Times, 19 February 2009. 2000s

People, Justice, Idea

“The use of force is non-moral, that is to say, it is good or bad depending on the motive behind its use and the effects of it application. To reason by analogy from the justification of the use of force to a justification of war is to endanger sound decisions and may lead to disastrous consequences.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

"What is War?" (1924)

War, Motivation, Dependency

“The evident problem with democracy today is that the state is pre-empting – or 'crowding out', as the economists say – our moral judgments. Rulers are adding moral judgments to the expanding schedule of powers they exercise. Nor does the state deal merely with principles. It is actually telling its subjects to do very specific things. Yet decisions about how we live are what we mean by 'freedom,' and freedom is incompatible with a moralizing state. That is why I am provoked to ask the question: can the moral life survive democracy?”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

Introduction p. 3-4
The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life

Life, Exercises, Democracy, Question

“We have never said that the fight against the Iranian aggression and against the expansionist Persian tendencies (which have been demonstrated by various means under successive regimes in Iran) is the decisive battle for the Arabs. What we have said, and still say, is that the fight against Zionism is the main decisive battle for the Arabs. This is a great objective reality, which cannot be denied or underestimated except by someone who would not only harm the Arab nation and its main causes, but would also overlook the main danger.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

Reality, Success, Fight

“June 1, 2009 was the day that we were meant to go to the stadium and try and get the president's attention. It's a national holiday, it's broadcast across the country, and I showed up at the stadium. My friends did not show up. I found myself alone, and I didn't know what to do. I was scared, but I knew very well that that particular day, I had to make a decision. Was I able to live as a coward, like everyone else, or was I going to make a stand? And when the president stood up to speak, I found myself on my feet shouting at the president, telling him to remember the post-election violence victims, to stop the corruption. And suddenly, out of nowhere, the police pounced on me like hungry lions. They held my mouth and dragged me out of the stadium, where they thoroughly beat me up and locked me up in jail. I spent that night in a cold cement floor in the jail, and that got me thinking. What was making me feel this way? My friends and family thought I was crazy because of what I did, and the images that I took were disturbing my life. The images that I took were just a number to many Kenyans. Most Kenyans did not see the violence. It was a story to them. … That day in the stadium, I stood up as a smart coward. By that one action, I said goodbye to the 24 years living as a coward.”

Boniface Mwangi (1983) Kenyan photojournalist

The day I stood up alone

Life, Family, Way, Feeling

“In recent years there has been increased interest in the effects of internal communication on decision processes. A number of hypotheses relating the bias in information to the final decision have been proposed. In this paper we discuss two laboratory experiments which were designed to test two such hypotheses. The first experiment tests the hypothesis that cost and sales estimations are made with the implicit assumption that a biased pay-off structure exists. The second experiment tests explicitly the effects of biased and unbiased pay-off structures on estimation within an organization. An analysis of the data for the two experiments is made and some implications for further research are drawn from the results.”

James G. March (1928–2018) American sociologist

Richard Cyert, James G. March, William H. Starbuck. (1961) "Two experiments on bias and conflict in organisational estimation," Management Science, 254–64; Abstract

Communication

“Decisive breakthroughs in military medical administration came just after the turn of the twentieth century. Until then, in even the best-managed armies, disease was always a far more lethal factor than enemy action, even during active campaigns.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

Source: Plagues and Peoples (1976), Ch.6.

Disease

“Why have our standards fallen so low? Why do we have all these ugly things which nobody needs? Industrial manufacture and new materials have led to truly unlimited possibilities of forms. There are no longer any natural constraints which depend on materials such as wood and stone. We simply manufacture everything that is technically possible and lack new structures on which to base our decisions.”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

(1986) n.p.
Structures are no longer valid', in "Ein Gespräch..."

Nature, Dependency

“A fundamental part of any firm's corporate strategy is its choice of what portfolio of business to compete in. According to the academic literature, this decision should reflect the 'superiority' of related diversification over unrelated diversification… This is because related diversification presumably allows the corporate center to exploit the interrelationships that exist among its different businesses (SBUs) and so achieve cost and/or differentiation competitive advantages over its rivals.”

Constantinos C. Markides (1960) Cypriot business theorist

Source: "Related diversification, core competences and corporate performance", 1994, p. 149

Literature, Business, Parting

“For me, the only correct meaning of that phrase is that our Government must proceed according to the 'law of the land'—that is, according to written constitutional and statutory provisions as interpreted by court decisions.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

On due process, dissenting in In Re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970).

Law

“The greatest and most valuable resources we have for making crucial decision are knowledge and the amazing brainpower God gave human beings when he created us. That's certainly true for deciding our best response to any risk we ever face.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 64

God, Knowledge

“Verily God is able to convert light into fire whenever He pleaseth; surely He is potent over all things. And were He to declare a person whom ye regard alien to the truth as being akin thereto, err not by questioning His decision in your fancies, for He Who is the Sovereign Truth createth things through the power of His behest. Verily God transmuteth fire into light as He willeth, and indeed potent is He over all things. Consider ye how the truth shone forth as truth in the First Day and how error became manifest as error; so likewise shall ye distinguish them from each other on the Day of Resurrection.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVII, 4
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

God, Truth, Error, Question

“I had the good luck a few years ago to visit the archeological site of Zippori in Israel … I could see here displayed the Greek culture that Jesus decisively rejected, the same Greek culture that infiltrated the Christian religion soon after his death and has dominated Christianity ever since.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Death, Religion

“A deep and serene silence filled her structures composed of colors and surfaces. The exclusive use of horizontal and vertical rectangular planes in the work of art, the extreme simplification, exerted a decisive influence on my work. Here I found, stripped down to the limit, the essential elements of all earthly constructions: the bursting, upward surge of the lines and the planes toward the sky, the verticality of pure life, and the vast equilibrium, the sheer horizontality and expansiveness of dreamlike peace. Her work was for me a symbol of a divinely built 'house' which man in his vanity has ravaged and sullied.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

a remark on the art of Sophie Taeuber, whom he later married.
in Abstract Painting Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 58
1960s

Life, Peace, Art, Color

“The inevitable lack of objectivity in political decisions, which is only the reflex to suppress the politically inherent friend-enemy antithesis, manifests itself in the regrettable forms and aspects of the scramble for office and the politics of patronage. The demand for depoliticalization which arises in this context means only the rejection of party politics, etc. The equation politics = party politics is possible whenever antagonisms among domestic political parties succeed in weakening the all-embracing political unit, the state.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“1. Political officials and leaders are to be liquidated. 2. Insofar as they are captured by the troops, an officer with authority to impose disciplinary punishment decides whether the given individual must be liquidated. For such a decision the fact suffices that he is a political official. 3. Political leaders in the troops (Red Army) are not recognized as prisoners of war and are to be liquidated at the latest in the prisoner-of-war transit camps.”

Walter Warlimont (1894–1976) German general

Order issued to the German Army about the occupation of the Soviet Union, May 12th, 1941. Quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - Page 335 - by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997

War

“[What inspired you to go vegetarian at age 19? ] A taste aversion stopped my eating meat, then my deep love and respect for animals started informing more and more of my decisions. I had an innate sense of wanting to be vegan, but I needed more information. The change was gradual, which let me think through every step. I was still eating dairy when my first son was born; he couldn't tolerate my breast milk, and I realized I had a dairy allergy. So, it kept evolving. I read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, and that did it.”

Mayim Bialik (1975) American actress, neuroscientist

“One on One with Mayim Bialik”, interview with Vegetarian Times (15 Jun 2011) https://www.vegetariantimes.com/life-garden/one-on-one-with-mayim-bialik.

Love, Age, Thinking, Sense

“Try to be likeable but stay true to your self. There will be times when you have to do or say something at the expense of being popular. If you’ve built up enough goodwill, you’ll get away with it. People understand that difficult decisions have to be made and, if you’ve paid enough into your ‘likeability deposit’, they will hate the decision but not the person making it.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Hate, People, Understanding, Time

“I pulled On The Road off the shelf and found myself reading it between classes, and at that time in my life it was exactly what I craved, exactly what I needed to hear. I thought, “That’s the way, that’s the ideal life, that’s great. You get in a car and you drive and you see your friends and you end up in a city for a night and you go out drinking and you catch up and you share these really intense experiences. And then you’re on the road and you’re doing it again.” The romance of the road, particularly from Kerouac’s work, encapsulated how I wanted to live. I found a way to do it by being a musician, which is what I always wanted to be. The traveling and the being on tour and being away from home set a precedent for me where I thought, “Oh yeah, this is how it works.”
But then in reading Big Sur, it’s the end of the road. You end up with a series of failed relationships and you end up being an alcoholic and in your late 30s, and not having any kind of real grip on the lives of the people around you. That’s the potential other end of the spectrum when you’re never tied to anybody or anything. I run the risk of losing touch with the people in my life that mean the most to me because I have made the decision to live like this.”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Source: The Meaning Of Life, I

Life, People, Alcohol, Cars

“I believe that life begins at conception. And abortion under no circumstances. … No, it comes down to it's not the government's role or anybody else's role to make that decision. Secondly, if you look at the statistical incidents, you're not talking about that big a number. So what I'm saying is it ultimately gets down to a choice that that family or that mother has to make. Not me as president, not some politician, not a bureaucrat. It gets down to that family. And whatever they decide, they decide. I shouldn't have to tell them what decision to make for such a sensitive issue. … The government shouldn't be trying to tell people everything to do, especially when it comes to social decisions that they need to make.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

Piers Morgan Tonight
Television
2011-11-19
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1110/19/pmt.01.html, quoted in * The pro-life candidate who’s pro-choice
Political Animal
2011-10-20
Steve
Benen
Washington Monthly
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_10/the_prolife_candidate_whos_pro032941.php
2011-10-23
on abortion

Life, People, Family

“And I decided that if motherhood turned a "young American beauty" into that unhappy woman, then motherhood wasn't for me, either. That youthful, emotional decision (ill-formed and made for the wrong reasons) kept me from too much early sexual experimentation, and probably turned me into a bit of a tease. I'd "neck" but only go so far, because... well, I because I was going to be a writer, "free and unhampered."”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

At the very least. I wasn't going to get pregnant in my teens.
Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 44

Youth, Beauty

“The man who gives his own decisions priority over society is a criminal.”

Alfred Bester book The Stars My Destination

Source: The Stars My Destination (1956), Chapter 14 (p. 221).

“Basically, too many other people made important decisions for us and we just wrote songs and worried about clothes and girls. In the early days he came round once with this girl who had convinced him that I was just a weirdo and that we had an unhealthy relationship. He sat me down and said, “Maybe we shouldn’t see so much of each other? Maybe we should knock the band on the head? It’s not really going anywhere, is it?" I was desperate for us to stick together and see it through because I never stopped believing. When we got signed, Carl was shocked. I had prepared myself and had been reading the NME since I was 16. Carl wasn’t like that.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Mail On Sunday, September 2008
Carl Barat

People, Girl, Reading, Clothes

“My prosecution has been unjust. My arrest was a political decision. I remain a political hostage.”

Selahattin Demirtaş (1973) Turkish Kurdish politician

I Am Running for President in Turkey. From My Prison Cell. (2018)

“Decision Points is based primarily on my recollections. With help from researchers, I have confirmed my account with government documents, contemporaneous notes, personal interviews, news reports, and other sources, some of which remain classified. There were instances in which I had to rely on memory alone. If there are inaccuracies in this book, the responsibility is mine. In the pages that follow, I have done my best to write about the decisions I got right, those I got wrong, and what I would do differently if given the chance. Of course, in the presidency, there are no do-overs. You have to do what you believe is right and accept the consequences. I tried to do that every day of my eight years in office. Serving as president was the honor of a lifetime, and I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to share my story.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. xii

Books, Memory, Chance, Help

“The institution of the family is decisive in determining not only if a person has the capacity to love another individual but in the larger social sense whether he is capable of loving his fellow men collectively. The whole of society rests on this foundation for stability, understanding and social peace.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003) American politician

Family and Nation, ch. 1 (1986)

Love, Men, Family, Peace

“Mr. Honda would always give me complete control over the score. Even though he was very knowledgeable about music, he would always say to me, "Mr. Ifukube, I know very little about music, so I'll allow you to make all of the decisions about the score." Mr. Honda was a very generous man. All of the other directors with whom I worked would stay in the control booth while the scores for their films were being recorded. Only Mr. Honda would come out of the booth and stand beside me while I was conducting. He was always very curious.”

Akira Ifukube (1914–2006) Japanese composer

As quoted by David Milner, "Akira Ifukube Interview II" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/ifukub2.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1993)

Music, Knowledge

“Maybe he one day - perhaps we will have to wait for his memoirs - could account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all, which is the illegal invasion of Iraq.”

Nick Clegg (1967) British politician

Remarks to Jack Straw at Prime Minister's Questions clarifying the government's position on the Iraq war after telling MPs the conflict had been "illegal" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10715629 (21 July 2010) 2010

Waiting

“The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside. The aim of this chapter is to provide an outside view—a lens—that I call a system of profound knowledge. It provides a map of theory by which to understand the organizations that we work in. The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people. Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgment of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations that he belongs to.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)

Life, People, Understanding, Knowledge

“The Process Chart is a device for visualizing a process as a means of improving it. Every detail of a process is more or less affected by every other detail; therefore the entire process must be presented in such form that it can be visualized all at once before any changes are made in any of its subdivisions. In any subdivision of the process under examination, any changes made without due consideration of all the decisions and all the motions that precede and follow that subdivision will often be found unsuited to the ultimate plan of operation.”

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Source: Process charts (1921), p. 3.

Change

“But I hope that by the decision and authority of wise princes that sometime devout and learned men from the churches of other nations and of ours may be summoned together to deliberate about all the controversies and that there be handed down to posterity one harmonious, true, and clear form of doctrine, without any ambiguity. Meanwhile, as far as possible, let us encourage the union of our churches with measured advice.”
Opto autem, ut sapientum Principum consilio, et autoritate aliquando, et ex aliarum gentium Ecclesiis, et nostris, pii et eruditi viri convocentur, ut de omnibus controversiis deliberetur, et una consentiens forma doctrinae vera et perspicua, sine ulla ambiguitate posteritati tradatur.

Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) German reformer

Letter to Elector Friedrich of the Palatinate, November 1, 1559. In The Peter Martyr Library: Dialogue on the Two Natures in Christ, Pietro Martire Vermigli, John Patrick Donnelly, trans. & ed, Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1995, ISBN 0940474336 ISBN 978-0940474338, vol. 2, p. 167. http://books.google.com/books?id=dkTspOwegEsC&pg=PA167&dq=%22true,+and+clear+form+of+doctrine,+++without+any+ambiguity%22&hl=en&ei=2XUqTJCjGY2inQf_q93VDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22true%2C%20and%20clear%20form%20of%20doctrine%2C%20%20%20without%20any%20ambiguity%22&f=false. Primary source: Corpus Reformatorum, 1842, Volume 9, p. 961. http://books.google.com/books?id=mMk8AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1559-IA6&dq=%22una+consentiens+forma+doctrinae+vera+et+perspicua%22&hl=en&ei=Wf4jTMOpIML78AaryfzcBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22una%20consentiens%20forma%20doctrinae%20vera%20et%20perspicua%22&f=false Alternate translation: Moreover, I desire that with the plan of the wise rulers and with their authority, pious and learned men at some time be called together both from our own churches and the churches of other nations in order that there might be a deliberation about all these controversies, and that one consenting form of doctrine, true and clear and without any ambiguity, might be handed down to posterity. In Melanchthon in English: New Translations into English with a Registry of Previous Translations: A Memorial to William Hammer (1909-1976), Lowell C. Green, Charles D. Froehlich, Center for Reformation Research, 1982, p. 24. http://books.google.com/books?id=kkoXAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Elector+Friedrich+of+the+Palatinate%22+english&dq=%22Elector+Friedrich+of+the+Palatinate%22+english&hl=en&ei=LIUqTNelDYPlnQeG85GYAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA

Men, Hope, Learning

“Robert Grosseteste … was born at the decisive moment when Greek and Arabic science became accessible in Latin versions.”

Carl B. Boyer (1906–1976) American mathematician

Source: The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959), p. 88

Science

“I believe the most important decision taken anywhere by anyone in the 20th century was the decision about where to locate the Princeton Graduate College. President of the University Thomas Woodrow Wilson wanted it down on the campus, integrated with the undergraduate college. His nemesis, Dean Andrew Fleming West, wanted it where it now is, up on a little hill overlooking the Princeton golf course. President Woodrow Wilson had one of his characteristic snits, resigned as president, went into politics and ruined the 20th century.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Remarks at the Disinvitation Dinner http://www.buckleyprogram.com/#!Transcript-of-George-Wills-Remarks-at-the-Disinvitation-Dinner/c18lp/i8sxengw20, William F. Buckley, Jr. Program at Yale (15 April 2015). Of his quip, Will remarked, "I simplify a bit and exaggerate somewhat." 2010s

Universe

“The suspicion has to arrive that if a public conversation about acceleration is beginning, it’s just in time to be too late. The profound institutional crisis that makes the topic ‘hot’ has at its core an implosion of social decision-making capability.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism" https://jacobitemag.com/2017/05/25/a-quick-and-dirty-introduction-to-accelerationism/ (2017)

Time

“There are major issues that people - as taxpayers and voters - will have to make informed decisions on in the near future. They will need to understand the science and the ethical considerations to form their opinions. Some of these are issues that will affect humanity for decades to come.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, 'The Science Guy' returns to tackle issues for older audience, Journal Gazette, Mattoon, Illinois, June 8, 2005, Associated Press]

People, Understanding, Science, Future

“Most proponents of a mandatory retirement age or term limits claim that we should amend the Constitution in order to alleviate the problems associated with life tenure. Their proposals implicitly reject an incentives approach to retirement because they assume that Justices will not act rationally in response to institutional modifications. In other words, both proposals are not only radical in their scope and represent substantial constitutional change, but they also rely on the remarkable proposition that Justices are fundamentally different from the rest of us in the way they approach economic decisions. There is little evidence to commend this view, and there is considerable empirical research to the contrary that supports Judge Posner’s thesis that Justices maximize the same thing everybody else does: their own utility.11 Put simply, legal scholars have not thought creatively about life tenure, shunning promising interdisciplinary approaches in favor of drastic constitutional change.”

David Stras (1974) American judge

The Incentives Approach to Judicial Retirement https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=550083013021092016089124092101123109019053019081050000104123078004026111095112098007032035042036057108108088070117116005124105087007061001121113115101118119116088029023111029064077104010121092024068066031005116087002001031092011074124095102105073&EXT=pdf (October 25, 2005)

Life, Age, Justice, Way

“Interaction may begin for quite different reasons. One or both persons may know something about the other and, on the basis of this information, may (anticipate that interaction would yield good outcomes. This would result in a deliberate decision to seek out the other person and interact with him. Under other circumstances the two persons may be thrown together by the operation of factors beyond their control. Their jobs may bring them together, common friends may introduce them, or residence in the same neighborhood may result in a chance meeting. In these instances interaction is begun in response to the immediate situation without any necessary anticipation of the possible consequences by either participant.”

John Thibaut (1917–1986) American social psychologist

Source: The social psychology of groups. 1959, p. 19-20

Chance, Personality

“May God give a blessed Laylat Al-Bara’ah to the whole Islamic World. May God give all Muslims faith in the degree of Haqq al-yaqîn (the total reality of Certainty), may God give them all the faith of the Prophets. May the decision for the system of the Mahdi, for the Unity of Islam be given insha’Allah in this night.”

Harun Yahya (1956) Turkish author

23 June 2013.
A9 TV addresses, 2013

God, World, Faith, Reality

“John Major: What I don't understand, Michael, is why such a complete wimp like me keeps winning everything.
Michael Brunson: You've said it, you said precisely that.
Major: I suppose Gus will tell me off for saying that, won't you Gus?
Brunson: No, no, no … it's a fair point. The trouble is that people are not perceiving you as winning.
Major: Oh, I know … why not? Because…
Brunson: Because rotten sods like me, I suppose, don't get the message clear [laughs].
Major: No, no, no. I wasn't going to say that - well partly that, yes, partly because of S-H-one-Ts like you, yes, that's perfectly right. But also because those people who are opposing our European policy have said the way to oppose the Government on the European policy is to attack me personally. The Labour Party started before the last election. It has been picked up and it is just one of these fashionable things that slips into the Parliamentary system and it is an easy way to proceed.
Brunson: But I mean you … has been overshadowed … my point is there, not just the fact that you have been overshadowed by Maastricht and people don't…
Major: The real problem is this…
Brunson: But you've also had all the other problems on top - the Mellors, the Mates … and it's like a blanket - you use the phrase 'masking tape' but I mean that's it, isn't it?
Major: Even, even, even, as an ex-whip I can't stop people sleeping with other people if they ought not, and various things like that. But the real problem is…
Brunson: I've heard other people in the Cabinet say 'Why the hell didn't he get rid of Mates on Day One?' Mates was a fly, you could have swatted him away.
Major: Yeah, well, they did not say that at the time, I have to tell you. And I can tell you what they would have said if I had. They'd have said 'This man was being set up. He was trying to do his job for his constituent. He had done nothing improper, as the Cabinet Secretary told me. It was an act of gross injustice to have got rid of him'. Nobody knew what I knew at the time. But the real problem is that one has a tiny majority. Don't overlook that. I could have all these clever and decisive things that people wanted me to do and I would have split the Conservative Party into smithereens. And you would have said, Aren't you a ham-fisted leader? You've broken up the Conservative Party.
Brunson: No, well would you? If people come along and…
Major: Most people in the Cabinet, if you ask them sensibly, would tell you that, yes. Don't underestimate the bitterness of European policy until it is settled - It is settled now.
Brunson: Three of them - perhaps we had better not mention open names in this room - perhaps the three of them would have - if you'd done certain things, they would have come along and said, 'Prime Minister, we resign'. So you say 'Fine, you resign'.
Major: We all know which three that is. Now think that through. Think it through from my perspective. You are Prime Minister. You have got a majority of 18. You have got a party still harking back to a golden age that never was but is now invented. And you have three rightwing members of the Cabinet actually resigned. What happens in the parliamentary party?
Brunson: They create a lot of fuss but you have probably got three damn good ministers in the Cabinet to replace them.
Major: Oh, I can bring in other people into the Cabinet, that is right, but where do you think most of this poison has come from? It is coming from the dispossessed and the never-possessed. You and I can both think of ex-ministers who are going around causing all sorts of trouble. Would you like three more of the bastards out there? What's the Lyndon Johnson, er, maxim?
Brunson: If you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.
Major: No, that's not what I had in mind, though it's pretty good.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Andrew Culf, "What the `wimp' really said to the S-H-one-T", The Guardian, 26 July 1993.
'Off-the-record' exchange with ITN reporter Michael Brunson following videotaped interview, 23 July 1993. Neither Major nor Brunson realised their microphones were still live and being recorded by BBC staff preparing for a subsequent interview; the tape was swiftly leaked to the Daily Mirror.

People, Age, Way, Fashion

“It is precisely now and only now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables… I come to the categorical conclusion that precisely at this moment we must give battle to the Black Hundred clergy in the most decisive and merciless manner and crush its resistance with such brutality that it will not forget it for decades to come… The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing for this reason, the better.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

As quoted in Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (1996), pp. 152-4.
Attributions

People, Forgetting

“Knowledge of God is obedience to God. Observe that we do not say that knowledge of God may also be obedience, or that of necessity it has obedience attached to it, or that it is followed by obedience. No; knowledge of God as knowledge of faith is in itself and of essential necessity obedience. It is an act of human decision corresponding to the act of divine decision; corresponding to the act of the divine being as the living Lord; corresponding to the act of grace in which faith is grounded and continually grounded again in God. In this act God posits Himself as our object and ourselves as those who know Him. But the fact that He does so means that our knowing God can consist only in our following this act, in ourselves becoming a correspondence of this act, in ourselves and our whole existence and therefore our considering and conceiving becoming the human act corresponding to the divine act. This is obedience, the obedience of faith.”

Karl Barth book Church Dogmatics

2:1
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)

God, Faith, Knowledge

“The proletariat thus shared its dictatorship with nobody. As to the question of the "majority", this never troubled Lenin much. In an article "Constitutional Illusions" (Aug. 1917; Works, vol. 25, p. 201) he wrote: "in time of revolution it is not enough to ascertain the ‘ will of the majority’ – you must prove to be stronger at the decisive moment and at the decisive place; you must win … We have seen innumerable examples of the better organized, more politically conscious and better armed minority forcing its will upon the majority and defeating it." (pg. 503) Trotsky, however, answers questions [in The Defence of Terrorism] that Lenin evaded or ignored. "Where is your guarantee, certain wise men ask us, that it is just your party that expresses the interests of historical development? Destroying or driving underground the other parties, you have thereby prevented their political competition with you, and consequently you have deprived yourselves of the possibility of testing your line of action." Trotsky replies: "This idea is dictated by a purely liberal conception of the course of the revolution. In a period in which all antagonisms assume an open character; and the political struggle swiftly passes into a civil war, the ruling party has sufficient material standard by which to test its line of action, without the possible circulation of Menshevik papers. Noske crushes the Communists, but they grow. We have suppressed the Mensheviks and the S. R. s [Socialist Republics] … and they have disappeared. This criterion is sufficient for us" (p. 101). This is one of the most enlightening theoretical formulations of Bolshevism, from which it appears that the "rightness" of a historical movement or a state is to be judged by whether its use of violence is successful. Noske did not succeed in crushing the German Communists, but Hitler did; it would thus follow from Trotsky’ s rule that Hitler "expressed the interests of historical development". Stalin liquidated the Trotskyists in Russia, and they disappeared – so evidently Stalin, and not Trotsky, stood for historical progress.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 510
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume II, The Golden Age

Men, War, Idea, Question

“Things never got better, and Rumsfeld and Cheney never got any wiser. It became increasingly clear that those two men had eroded our country's claim to any moral high ground by flouting the Geneva Conventions. They forced policy decisions that allowed the hideous prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and encouraged the mistreatment of Muslim prisoners at our facility in Guantánamo in Cuba. I wasn't shy about hammering Rumsfeld.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 351
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Men, Country

“The truth of matter is, ladies and gentlemen, comrades and friends, brothers and sisters, religion has it very much its own way in this country of ours. It's in the pledge of allegiance, thanks to a stupid intervention of President Eisenhower; it's on the money, it's in the opening of Congress every day, it's at the National Prayer Breakfast, it's when the delinquent president summons his advisors and his spiritual team in order to fend off what should have been inevitable, it's when Al Gore can't bring himself to criticize a decision of the Oklahoma school board, and it's high time that that situation was reversed and we developed a proper immunity to it, and made sure that religion can only be self-inflicted.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

Money, Truth, Stupidity, School

“…the Jews will gather from all parts of the world into occupied Palestine, not in order to bring about the anti-Christ and the end of the world, but rather that Allah the Glorified and Most High wants to save you from having to go to the ends of the world [to kill them], for they have gathered in one place–they have gathered in one place–and there the final and decisive battle will take place.”

Hassan Nasrallah (1960) Secretary General of Hezbollah

Quote, 2002 Source: Speech http://audio.moqawama.org/details.php?cid=1&linkid=189 Transcription and translation http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/189519/did-netanyahu-put-anti-semitic-words-in-hezbollahs-mouth

World, Christ, Parting

“Every Estonian had only one decision to make: whose side to take in that bloody fight — the Nazis' or the anti-Hitler coalition's.”

Arnold Meri (1919–2009) Estonian soldier allied with the Soviet Union

Quoted in "When giants fought in Estonia," http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6637895.stm BBC News (2007-05-09)

Fight

“The majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security. The mass campaign of defiance and other actions of our organization and people can only culminate in the establishment of democracy.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Our March to Freedom is Irreversible (1990)

People, Peace, Democracy, Future

“From the beginning, I knew the public reaction to my decisions would be colored by whether there was another attack. If none happened, whatever I did would probably look like an overreaction. If we were attacked again, people would demand to know why I hadn't done more. That is the nature of the presidency. Perceptions are shaped by the clarity of hindsight. In the moment of decision, you don't have that advantage. On 9/11, I vowed that I would do what it took to protect America, within the Constitution and laws of our nation. History can debate the decisions I made, the policies I chose, and the tools I left behind. But there can be no debate about one fact: After the nightmare of September 11, America went seven and a half years without another successful terrorist attack on our soil. If I had to summarize my most meaningful accomplishment as president in one sentence, that would be it.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. 181

People, Law, Color, History

“We are awaiting aggression by Israel and any supporters of Israel. We will make it a decisive battle and get rid of Israel once and for all… This is the dream of every Arab.”

Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970) second president of Egypt

As quoted in the Washington Post (27 July 1959)

Dreams, Support

“In terms of the future, our country has a hung parliament where no party has an overall majority and we have some deep and pressing problems — a huge deficit, deep social problems, a political system in need of reform. For those reasons, I aim to form a proper and full coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. I believe that is the right way to provide this country with the strong, the stable, the good and decent government that I think we need so badly.
Nick Clegg and I are both political leaders who want to put aside party differences and work hard for the common good and for the national interest. I believe that is the best way to get the strong government that we need, decisive Government that we need today.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2010, First speech as UK Prime Minister (2010)

Way, Problem, Thinking, Strong

“And after they have started the action will always look, as it did to the frightened men in the Federal Reserve Board in February 1929, like a decision in favor of immediate as against ultimate death. As we have seen, the immediate death not only has the disadvantage of being immediate but of identifying the executioner.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Chapter IX https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Cause and Consequence, Section VII, p 190 The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

Death, Men