Stephen A. Schwarzman Quotes

Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

The obvious choice isn't always the best choice, but sometimes, by golly, it is. I don't stop looking as soon I find an obvious answer, but if I go on looking, and the obvious-seeming answer still seems obvious, I don't feel guilty about keeping it.

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.

When I get logical, and I don't trust my instincts - that's when I get in trouble.

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

Logic obviously is important. You need to be able to figure things out, to go to the end of a particular problem. But intuition is very important because it references things that logic alone cannot.

I've always felt some kind of connection to people who are kind of over-smart. People who over-think things to the point of some sort of paralysis, and I think that certainly can be me on any given day.

I tend to over-analyse things. I'm not the type of person to flip a coin and let things happen.

The only stupidities that are not easily solved are those created by very intelligent men.

You want people with different life experiences as a backstop against bad decision.

I'm the kind of person who can paralyze myself very easily by over-thinking decisions.

I have always tended to over-think things and that had come into my game. That's good in certain moments but not when you have to make a quick decision.

Without our emotions, we can't make smart decisions.

If you overthink things, you end up doing things without the right reasons in mind.

It's very personal to me and doesn't work for everybody, but what I have found in my experience is that when I make pro and con lists, it's usually because I am trying to talk myself out of a good idea or talk myself into a really bad one.

It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with.

By using your intelligence, you can sometimes make your problems twice as complicated.

Most of the time you should use reason, there is no doubt about that because gut often makes us susceptible to lots of different biases, particularly if what you're deciding is something that you really, that expertise can be brought to bear on it, there is a way in which you can align the odds, so then you should really use reason.

Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.

How many situations can be resolved with less thinking?

Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.

My friend Terry says that when you need to make a decision, in your work or otherwise, and you don’t know what to do, just do one thing or the other, because the worst that can happen is that you will have made a terrible mistake.

He who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of probabilities and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road, till some accident intercepts his journey.

Rationality is the master lifehack which distinguishes which other lifehacks to use.

We can't avoid reasoning; we can only avoid doing it well.