Brent Sexton Quotes

'12 Angry Men' has a truly great collection of actors giving fantastic performances. It's an acting masterclass.

'Twelve Angry Men' was done with an intermission, and I took that out. I really wanted an audience to feel like they had no break, just like those jurors, and you're not going to get out of that room until you come to a decision.

A committee should consist of three men, two of whom are absent.

When men organize themselves into groups, and they make rules based on common or self-interest, it's always tangled and political.

Human nature is so constituted, that all see and judge better in the affairs of other men than in their own.

We try to make sensible decisions with the facts in front of us. The problem with sensible decisions is that so is everyone else.

Discussion is just a tool. You have to aim; the final goal must be a decision.

Many CEOs and leaders think that silence is indeed golden, that consensus is bliss. It is - sometimes. But more often what it signifies is that there are no respected processes for surfacing concerns and dissent.

Too many problem-solving sessions become battlegrounds where decisions are made based on power rather than intelligence.

There is no way I could discuss things with Jimmy in an intelligent way if I didn’t attend cabinet meetings

If you really wish to be independent and make your own judgements about everything important, it is difficult to be a good team player —because a team has different criteria for making judgements about an issue.

Talking to people is beneficial if you can identify the right people to share ideas and discuss decisions because everyone has blind spots, and others can sometimes catch yours. I think an investment team is a bad idea, but it is a good idea to talk to trustworthy individuals who do not have biases or interests.

When we come into the NSC, everybody has different opinions. At the end of the day, we present the president with all the facts. We let him make the decision. And we all, as a team, go out and support that decision.

You can't evaluate your situation when you're in a band, not really.

You must have the confidence to override people with more credentials than you whose cognition is impaired by incentive-caused bias or some similar psychological force that is obviously present. But there are also cases where you have to recognize that you have no wisdom to add - and that your best course is to trust some expert.

You must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best

Leadership is solving problems.

I learned early that you'd better know what you're talking about. You'd better realize that certain issues are going to be so hot - no matter what reason, what logic you apply to it - you're going to be met with an opposition just because their viewpoint is different, and there's no way they're going to accept your reasoning. Furthermore, they're going to attack you because you will be portrayed as not being credible: "You're an actor. What do you know?"

I'm a very good decision maker because I have core set of principles and so I can make decisions. Decisions can be very hard and you have to wrestle with them, but I'm able to get all the data on the table and figure out what would be the best decision because decisions mean ill for some people and mean positives for others.

With problems and issues groups face- there is an enormous disconnect between understanding and doing.

In critical moments, men sometimes see exactly what they wish to see.

Three people marooned on a desert island would soon reinvent politics.

Throughout history, one of the biggest problems is that the correct course of action is not always obvious, and the obvious course of action is not always correct.

You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.

In any organization there ought to be the possibility of discussion... fence sitting is an art, and it's difficult, and it's important to do, rather than to go headlong in one direction or the other. It's just better to have action, isn't it than to sit on the fence? Not if you're not sure which way to go, it isn't.