Norm Coleman Quotes

We need to be able to make decisions even though part of the information that we have is incorrect and wrong.

Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information.

Where facts are few, experts are many.

If you get all the facts, your judgment can be right. If you don't get all the facts, it can't be right.

Those who made the decisions with imperfect knowledge will be judged in hindsight by those with considerably more information at their disposal and time for reflection.

If the modern leader doesn't know the facts, he is in grave trouble, but rarely do the facts provide unqualified guidance.

Making good judgments when one has complete data, facts, and knowledge is not leadership - it's bookkeeping

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Never make predictions, especially about the future.

Hindsight can be merciless. People of any given era often look back in time and wonder how their predecessors could have been so dimwitted.

You can't help but... with 20/20 hindsight, go back and say, 'Look, had we done something different, we probably wouldn't be facing what we are facing today.'

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

The only exercise I excel at is jumping to conclusions.

Each man must reach his own verdict, by weighing all the relevant evidence.

The thing about looking back over Clinton's presidency, and probably anybody's presidency, is that when you look back, the events all line up in a way that makes sense. At the time, you don't know where it's going.

Life is made up of a series of judgments on insufficient data, and if we waited to run down all our doubts, it would flow past us.

It is always awfully easy to say what she would have done after you haven’t done it

The fact that a man is driven back on feelings and instincts to justify an action or course of action which he has thought over and discussed, is good evidence that what he calls his feelings and instincts are at variance with his better judgment … and may therefore be worthless or dangerous guides in any wider matter involving the fate of his country or his fellow-countrymen.

Historical analogy is the last refuge of people who can't grasp the current situation.

Good policy analysis recognizes that physical truth may be poorly or incompletely known. Its objective is to evaluate, order, and structure incomplete knowledge so as to allow decisions to be made with as complete an understanding as possible of the current state of knowledge, its limitations, and its implications.

Any 6 year old’s hindsight is better than a President’s foresight.

In many important contexts, especially those that are complex, new, or unfamiliar, you shouldn’t blink… and you really shouldn’t trust your gut.

If you wait until you have all the facts, then it will be too late..

Sometimes you have to make decisions without knowing all that you would like to know That's part of the job.

Estimation, assessment, looking back, retrospecting things - those are intellectual concepts, and they're always so subject to shifts in the wind.