Julian Barratt Quotes

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

Most consequential choices involve shades of gray, and some fog is often useful in getting things done.

Public decision-making does not lend itself to certitude.

When it comes to politics, there's never a certain yes or no to any situation.

Life is extremely complicated.

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.

There is no single right answer or path forward, but there is one right way to frame the problem.

The main questions of everyday life are too enormous to answer in any definitive sense.

It is such a complex matter we live within, it is impossible to track logic and decision making really, so therefore each choice can actually only be seen as coincidence.

Most of the decisions you make are not black and white, but at the end of the day, you have to make the decision.

It's easy to get into the grey zone [of ethics].

It's hard to pin down precise dates on these things.

If we have as a clear certainty with which to plan, total uncertainty, then that would be helpful.

There is such a choice of difficulties, that I own myself at a loss how to determine

In the intelligence business you are almost never completely wrong or completely right.

There aren't always a hell of a lot of absolutely right answers out there.

You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything and know that we don't, that's the important part.

There are no simple answers in life. There is a good and bad in everyone and everything. No decision is made without consequence. No road is taken that doesn't lead to another. What's important is that those roads always be kept open, for there's no telling what wonder they might lead to.

There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is impossible.

People like definite decisions, / Tidy answers, all the little ravelings / Snipped off, the lint removed, they / Hop happily among their roughs / Calling what they can't clutch insanity / Or saintliness.

It's easy to judge, to think we know for certain the right thing to do. Sometimes, it just isn't so clear.

A great opportunity is often hard to be explained clearly; things that can be explained clearly are often not the best opportunities.

I was not 15 anymore, and choices no longer had that same clear, bright edge to them.

Trouble comes not because we have taken any wrong step but because we are in a complex and contradictory world.

Undecidability is a useful category even in dealing with restaurant menus.