Nancy Gibbs Quotes

CEOs make hard decisions; sometimes, the least worst is the right one.

To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.

Social changes always involve trade-offs.

There are certain pressures and things that change your life to a degree that, in the cost benefit analysis that constantly goes on, sometimes makes you think, 'Maybe I should just leave.'

I just think that sometimes we hang onto people or relationships long after they've ceased to be of any use to either of you. I'm always meeting new people, and my list of friends seems to change quite a bit.

In my own life, I'm pretty good at choosing between good and bad. It's the choices between good and good I find the most difficult to make.

Everything you want in life has a price connected to it. There's a price to pay if you want to make things better, a price to pay just for leaving things as they are, a price for everything.

But the path you end up on means that you have to close a lot of doors, too.

Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn't know the answer.

But everything you do in life has a downside.

There is simply no way we are going to make progress on the enormous challenges we face without making hard choices. It's impossible.

Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.

Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.

We all have choices we have to make, and with those choices come certain sacrifices.

You can't sit on the lid of progress. If you do, you will be blown to pieces.

Oh yes, technique has definitely advanced. But you never advance without losing something en passant, and you lose it because you're paying so much attention to the new thing.

If you have difficulties making a decision, choose the lesser of the two evils.

The most painful moral struggles are not those between good and evil, but between the good and the lesser good.

What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

It was painful, but sometimes you must have these painful moments where you tear yourself away from something that isn't working.

The price of progress is trouble, and I must be making a lot of progress.

He who does not advance, retreats.

Sometimes, when a tide starts to sweep, it makes no difference what the traditions are.