John Carmack Quotes

Outstanding long-term results are produced primarily by avoiding dumb decisions, rather than by making brilliant ones.

It's remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.

When Dad made a decision, whether it was about family or his own career, the majority of the time, it was for the long term, not the short term.

A brilliant strategy is, certainly, a matter of intelligence, but intelligence without audaciousness is not enough.

If you're smart, you abandon the things that didn't work out so well, and you enlarge upon the things that seem to be successful.

This idea of having back-up plans is ingrained into us to make us believe that that's the smart thing to do.

Don't try to be brave when it is enough to be intelligent.

Wisdom is exercised in the choices you make.

Daddy always said that an option that you know to have a bad outcome is only a fool's option, i.e., not an option at all. And I liked to think that Daddy hadn't raised a fool.

You don't have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long, long, time.

If you think about the long term then you can really make good life decisions that you won’t regret later.

Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.

The right decisions come from the right focus. You’ll succeed if your focus is on the mission, not the money.

Good decisions don't make life easy, but they do make it easier.

A man who is half an idiot, but who keeps a sharp lookout and acts prudently all his life, often enjoys the pleasure of triumphing over men of more imagination than he

A chief does not hurry.

Strategic plans cause more dumb decisions than anything else in America.

The reality is that there is an enormous value to gut-check instinctive decision-making in the world that is not hampered by reams and reams of research and complexity.

If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds.... I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.

Power is different when you combined it with wisdom. Wisdom allows you to use less power to accomplish more tasks.

When happiness points in one direction while wisdom, truth, integrity, and common sense point in another, that's when really smart people start doing really stupid things.

Leadership isn't making all the decisions. It is making sure the right decisions are made.

Let's prove that we're going to stand together, make the smart decisions that will get the economy going and growing for everybody, not just those at the top, that we will stand up against special privilege and special interest.

Το know how to profit by good advice, requires nearly as much ability as to know how to act for one'self.