“A decision is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.”

— Arthur W. Radford

Quoted in Time Magazine: ARMED FORCES: Man Behind the Power http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,936815,00.html, 25 February 1957.

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Arthur W. Radford1

United States naval aviator 1896–1973

John Vorhaus

Introduction
Poker Night (2004)

“The retrieval process begins when a lack of information shows itself in a human mind and the decision is taken to ﬁnd out if this information has been discovered and published”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Source: Classification and indexing in the social sciences (1963), p. 86; As cited in: Mei Hong (2006, p. 44)

“The greater the task uncertainty, the greater the amount of information that must be processed among decision makers during task execution in order to achieve a given level of performance.”

Jay R. Galbraith (1939–2014) American business theorist

Source: Designing complex organizations, 1973, p. 4

“When the country is occupied and the people are being killed by the enemy, everyone must take action, even if he sacrifices himself in so doing.”

Ahmed Sheikh (1949) Palestinian journalist

On Palestinian suicide bombings. <br class="br">Source: World Politics Watch http://www.worldpoliticswatch.com/article.aspx?id=395, 7 December 2006.

“When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of oratory, he answered, "Action;" and which was the second, he replied, "Action;" and which was the third, he still answered, "Action."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Lives of the Ten Orators
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Man has the hardest job of all, the job of making decisions on incomplete data.”

Henry Kuttner (1915–1958) American author

Home There’s No Returning (p. 80)
Short fiction, No Boundaries (1955)

“Global rationality, the rationality of neoclassical theory, assumes that the decision maker has a comprehensive, consistent utility function, knows all the alternatives that are available for choice, can compute the expected value of utility associated with each alternative, and chooses the alternative that maximizes expected utility. Bounded rationality, a rationality that is consistent with our knowledge of actual human choice behavior, assumes that the decision maker must search for alternatives, has egregiously incomplete and inaccurate knowledge about the consequences of actions, and chooses actions that are expected to be satisfactory”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

attain targets while satisfying constraints
Simon (1997, p. 17); As cited in: Gustavo Barros (2010, p. 460).
1980s and later

“Whenever a warrior decides to do something he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "Journey to Ixtlan" (Chapter 8)

“What does one do when a madman suggests an appealing course of action? One worries—but probably goes along with it.”

Charles Sheffield book Summertide

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 13, “Summertide Minus Ten” (p. 151)

“Decisions are always made with insufficient information. If you really knew what was going on, the decision would make itself.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 39 (p. 370)

“A decision is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.”

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Arthur W. Radford1

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