E. Stanley Jones Quotes

Indecision may or may not be my problem.

I second-guess and overthink and rethink every single thing that I do.

I have hesitation making any kind of decision, really in my life. I'm really slow at it.

I've come to learn that the choices I labor over and go back and forth about and ask a million people for their opinions and make lists about... those are always the wrong choices.

I was disappointed a little in Stevenson because I did think he couldn't make up his mind. It's the feeling I always had. Perhaps all of us have self-doubt, and we should have, and most of us do, but it doesn't show. It doesn't show as much as it did in Adlai; he seemed to do it in public.

If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.

You've got to stop going back and forth. You've got to make up your mind.

In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start.

It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.

When in doubt, doubt the doubt!

In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

Indecision is the seedling of fear.

Often, if there's something that I want to do, but somehow can't get myself to do, it's because I don't have clarity. This lack of clarity often arises from a feeling of ambivalence - I want to do something, but I don't want to do it; or I want one thing, but I also want something else that conflicts with it.

In my mind, I never doubted whether I was going to achieve what I wanted to do. I just had to decide what it is I wanted to do.

I don't feel real confident expressing myself except when I'm writing. I feel kind of scatterbrained. I can see everything from both sides and that makes it hard to reach conclusions. Writing enables me to clarify things.

Leave undone whatever you hesitate to do.

Too many of us fail to fulfill our needs because we say no rather than yes, or perhaps later in life, yes when we should say no.

I don't know what I want to do. There are people who want me to do things. There's a possible book. There are lots of things to consider. I just have to figure out what I want to do. I'm not one to sit around and do nothing.

I used to second guess myself all the time. I can sit there and work in circles when I'm nervous about what I'm doing.

I am very indecisive. I'm always afraid of making the wrong decision.

I second-guess myself all the time. I make a decision and then wonder if I made the wrong choice.

The woman that deliberates is lost.

Oh, God, why don't I remember that a little chaos is good for the soul?

I'm a wonderful editor. That's what I do best. I know exactly what I want. If I have to decide whether to wear the red dress or the blue dress or what should I have said, I am constantly changing my mind.