Gordon Brown Quotes

Effective Presidents are those who can achieve a balance between purpose and prudence.

Foreign policy exactly suits Obama's strong points as a leader, which turn out not to be giving the masses a clear sense of direction and hope, but instead exercising good judgment on a case-by-case basis while thinking many steps ahead of the present moment.

Being a Navy SEAL and sniper taught me all about risk management. Take away all the risk variables under your control and reduce it to an acceptable level. The same fundamentals apply in business.

Making an investment decision is like formulating a scientific hypothesis and submitting it to a practical test. The main difference is that the hypothesis that underlies an investment decision is intended to make money and not to establish a universally valid generalization.

Uncertainty is a permanent part of the leadership landscape. It never goes away.

I want to make smart choices.

I'm not the world's best philosopher. But I am one of the world's best strategists. I will put my strategic abilities against anybody on Earth.

Thinking well to be wise: planning well, wiser: doing well wisest and best of all.

You need to carry out very careful pre-feasibility and feasibility studies before you enter any crisis situation.

If we do not make tough decisions now, future Americans will have to make even tougher ones.

I think an important lesson from the game is that once you have made a move, you cannot take it back. You really have to measure your decisions. You think a lot. You evaluate your choices very carefully. There's never any guarantee about what's going to follow once you have made a decision.

One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.

I must analyze, from what I do now, what will be the impact two or three or five years in the future. What is the statement I want to make?

I was obliged to take tough, painful and bold decisions to ensure a manageable tomorrow.

I tremendously enjoy getting involved in a troubled situation and straightening it out... My interest would be if there was a situation that came up, and I thought I could do something with and the price was right, I would be interested.

No general in the midst of battle has a great discussion about what he is going to do if defeated.

The actions you plan to take and the actions you actually decide to take [in a crisis] are not always the same.

How the United States chose to deal with its growing reliance on foreign oil would determine its future.

This is the sort of decision that presidents must make: Hard choices with insufficient information.

In our government we drive decisions either by leadership of by crises. If the leadership is not there, we rely on crises.

Every good businessman or woman carefully analyzes all the available facts before making a decision.

I'm very knowledgeable of the challenges before me.

There is a time for weighing evidence and a time for acting. And if there's one thing I've learned throughout my work in finance, government, and conservation, it is to act before problems become too big to manage.

If you're on a bus and going down a snowy mountain like in Tahoe, and the bus loses its brakes, where do you want to be sitting? Immediately, you all think, 'In the back.' But in the front would be the correct answer. As a quarterback, you want to take control of it.

I never have used computers or calculators. I've always been able to figure out in my head, far before my opposition has, in negotiating for acquisitions, where we need to be and where the numbers are and how we could get the best sight of the bargain, without having to resort to accountants or assistants or financial experts.