Critical Decision Quotes

The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.

I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

There are moments that define a person's whole life. MOMENTS in which everything they are and everything they may possibly become hinge on a single decision.

When swimming into a dark tunnel,there arrives a point of no return when you no longer have enough breath to double back.your choice is to swim forward into the unknown....and pray for an exit

[Urging a referendum:] The issue of private ownership of land is too critical a decision to be left to the government.

No one in his right mind would walk into the cockpit of an airplane and try to fly it, or into an operating theater and open a belly. And yet they think nothing of managing their retirement assets. I've done all three, and I'm here to tell you that managing money is, in its most critical elements even more demanding than the first two.

The president finally explained why he sat in that classroom on 9/11 for 7 minutes after he was told the country was under attack. He said he was 'collecting his thoughts.' What a time to start a new hobby.'

It's the choosing that's important, isn't it?

The board is currently undertaking what could be its most important task, ... We are confident that we're going to make a choice that is in the best interest of the company, shareholders and others.

...The task is overwhelming, and the chance is slight. We must take the chance or die.

'Why do you think it is...', I asked Dr. Cook ... 'that brain surgery, above all else-even rocket science-gets singled out as the most challenging of human feats, the one demanding the utmost of human intelligence?' [Dr. Cook answered,] 'No margin for error.'

… a dangerous, unexampled, desperate resort.

Any decision I make is the biggest decision of my life.

There's times when one play makes the whole difference, one calls makes the whole difference. And tonight it was that call.

Stay alert. The big moral crossroads in your life may not come labeled as such.

A moment of choice is a moment of truth. It's the testing point of our character and competence.

If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time to be considering alternative strategies.

I can't think of an election that is more important, certainly in my lifetime.

Ask any successful person to look back over the events of his or her life, and chances are there'll be a turning point of one kind or another. It doesn't matter if that success has come on a ball field or in a boardroom, in a research laboratory or on a campaign trail - it can usually be traced to some pivotal moment.

Don't you see, Katniss, this will decide things. One way or the other. By the end of the day, they'll ether be dead or with us. It's...it's more than we could hope for! Well, that's a sunny view of our situation.

A significant portion of the earth's population will soon recognize, if they haven't already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.

You have to ruthlessly prioritize.

I thought about how one tiny decision can change a life. A decision that takes only a split second to make.

I told that girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an individual's verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the way for its infliction upon the world. I said that the great public was the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort, and therefore it must be best to lay it before that tribunal in the outset, since in the end it must stand or fall by that mighty court's decision any way.

What is necessary is never unwise.