Vince Cable Quotes

Prudence is foresight and far-sightedness. It's the ability to make immediate decisions on the basis of their longer-range effects.

Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.

I understand that fans think short-term, and there's nothing wrong with that. You live or you die in the short term. But I believe in our system, and when you do that, you don't make knee-jerk decisions.

Foresight is not about predicting the future, it's about minimizing surprise.

Over the time that I followed Warren Buffett, one CFO told me, it's very important to pay attention not only to what Warren Buffett says and what he actually does - often there are subtle differences between the two.

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

For its health, cricket needs to look outward to the sharpest minds, to people who sustain and nurture brands and often take hard but necessary decisions. Cricket cannot be bound by cricketing minds alone.

The Jews had, as a matter of fact, long been all along the most ingenious entrepreneurs. It was only our own future that we had never built upon a business basis.

Remember, the goal of structured futures thinking is to come up with a picture of possible futures that will help to inform strategic decisions.

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

You just can't get too focused on worrying about what's going to happen in the next quarter. You have to worry about where the business is headed long-term.

Anybody can do a deal. The tough part is doing the deal at the right time, being strategic.

You have to build businesses for longer term.

I want to take a long-term view. Being distracted by short term things can be dangerous when you are making cold, calm, long-term decisions.

It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails when you're trying to make a plan work.

To deal with future we have to deal with possibilities. Analysis will only tell us what is.

America looks 10 minutes ahead; Japan looks 10 years.

The opportunist thinks of me and today. The statesman thinks of us and tomorrow.

This idea of anticipation is key to investing and to business generally. You can't wait for an opportunity to become obvious. You have to think, "Here's what other people and companies have done under certain circumstances. Now, under these new circumstances, how is this management likely to behave?"

An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.

Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'

If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you'll never make it.

You want to be an alchemist so badly? Don't wait to react to the immediate problem. Plan ahead. Look at the big picture and you won't ever have to deal with that problem. Better to save yourself from a major catastrophe than drag your feet over a bunch of little inconveniences.

Leaders make decisions that create the future they desire.

Impatience is a poor substitute for a well-considered plan.