Herodotus Quotes

They [the Persians] are accustomed to deliberate on matters of the highest moment when warm with wine; but whatever they in this situation may determine is again proposed to them on the morrow, in their cooler moments, by the person in whose house they had before assembled. If at this time also it meet their approbation, it is executed; otherwise it is rejected. Whatever also they discuss when sober, is always a second time examined after they have been drinking.

The Persians are very fond of wine ... It is also their general practice to deliberate upon affairs of weight when they are drunk; and then in the morning, when they are sober, the decision to which they came the night before is put before them by the master of the house in which it was made; and if it is then approved they act on it; if not, they set it aside. Sometimes, however, they are sober at their first deliberations, but in this case they always reconsider the matter under the influence of wine.

If in the first group of people who have gathered, unanimity is not achieved, new people shall be added, after which a group equal in number to the Greatest Name or fewer or greater shall be chosen from their midst by lots; whereupon the consultation shall be renewed; whatever is the result shall be obeyed. If the second time opinions again differ, repeat the process a third time. This time obey the majority vote.

Ritual is the most primitive reflection of serious thought, a slow deposit, as it were, of people's imaginative insight into life.

Research shows that the deciscions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful and creative when there is minority dissent than when it is absent.

There is no name for all who participate in group decision-making or the organization which they form. I propose to call this organization the Technostructure.

You have a meeting to make a decision, not to decide on the question.

Things come up from the outside, the outside world says, okay, you have do this, you have to go here and here and here, and these are your options. You can be here or you can be here. You can do this, or you can do this. You can go here, or you can go there. So each one of those things becomes a place of decision, and the way we make decisions is that we all get together and if somebody doesn't feel right about it or it doesn't seem to sit right, usually we'll go with the no vote. If somebody's not comfortable with it, we'll figure it's not going to be worth doing.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

Either in or out of time, the decision of a personal agency to commit an action happens antecedent to the action itself. Even if the deciding and the acting happened simultaneously, it would still not be true that the acting was antecedent to the deciding. Imagine God saying, "Oh, look! I just created a universe. Now I'd better decide to do it.

When you need to make a decision, don't let your emotions vote.

The only good thing ever done by a committee was the King James version.

Traditions are neither good nor bad, they simply are... Rationality is not an arbiter of traditions, it is itself a tradition or an aspect of a tradition.

Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.

I?m not even sure I?d go into a reformed House of Lords. But let?s put it like this, the decision would have been easier had there been not even complete reform but a substantial stride.

The 1st question the effective decision-maker asks is: 'Is this a generic situation or an exception?'

There are basically no companies that have good slow decisions. There are only companies that have good fast decisions.

Making decisions was the painful part for me, the part I agonized over. But once the decision was made, I simply followed through—usually with relief that the choice was made. Sometimes the relief was tainted by despair, like my decision to come to Forks. But it was still better than wrestling with the alternatives.

I am very comfortable with the strategic decisions that I made.

How many small decisions accumulate to form a habit? What a multitude of decisions, made by others, in other times, must shape our lives now.

A complex decision is like a great river, drawing from its many tributaries the innumerable premises of which it is constituted.

When I made the decision - when my team-mates made that decision, when the whole peloton made that decision - it was a bad decision and an imperfect time. But it happened.

In the Fiji islands, it appears, cannibalism is now familiar. They eat thier own wives and children. We only devour widows' houses, and great merchants outwit and absorb the substance of small ones, and every man feeds on his neighbor's labor if he can. It is a milder form of cannibalism.

You [as a president] have to have a strong team around you. You have to have respect for institutions and the process to make good decisions because you are inherently reliant on other folks.

No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone's work assignment and responsibility.