Elizabeth Janeway Quotes

I think the worst decision is usually no decision. If you make the wrong decision you can usually course-correct, but if you don't make it, you've already made it, and it's usually the bad one.

I have no brakes on...analysis is for those who are paralyzed by life.

Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.

Withholding a decision is a decision.

The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.

Inaction may be the biggest form of action.

People who think too much before they act don't act too much.

The only risk we run is by doing nothing.

Be part of the solution and answer to the problem versus part of the problem and continuing argument around it.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned recently is that when you don't know what to do, you should do nothing until you figure out what to do because a lot of times you feel like you are pressed against the wall, and you've got to make a decision. You never have to do anything. Don't know what to do? Do nothing.

...discussion is also a most excellent means to avoid -decision-

Sometimes too much thinking leads to the Death of Doing

Overthinking is often a product of underdoing.

But the only way never to do the wrong thing is never to do anything.

While some of us act without thinking, too many of us think without acting.

If we are waiting for guaranteed courses of action, we may spend much of our life waiting.

If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.

Make up your mind, Snail! You are half inside your house, And halfway out!

Irresolution is a worse vice than rashness. He that shoots best may sometimes miss the mark; but he that shoots not at all can never hit it. Irresolution loosens all the joints of a state; like an ague, it shakes not this nor that limb, but all the body is at once in a fit. The irresolute man is lifted from one place to another; so hatcheth nothing, but addles all his actions.

Those who are right do not argue. Those who argue are not right.

Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.

...crushed between the fears of going forward and the dread of going back.

The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice.

Making no decision is a decision. To do nothing. And doing nothing always brings you to nowhere.

If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen.