Bill Cowher Quotes

You cannot afford to wait for perfect conditions. Goal setting is often a matter of balancing timing against available resources. Opportunities are easily lost while waiting for perfect conditions.

As an economist, I'm aware that life is full of trade offs.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

Everything we do in public policy prevents us from doing something else. To govern is to choose.

Time is our ultimate scarcity. Isaac Newton can give us more electricity, but he can't give us more than 24 hours of the day of time. And so we're constantly having to sacrifice alternate activities to get the one that pleases us most.

There are a lot of decisions we pass up on because we think, "You know what? That's just going to build - you know, maybe that's going to build me and not build the ministry and what I'm trying to do." So we pass up on a lot of opportunities.

Strategy is choice. Strategy means saying no to certain kinds of things.

Great entrepreneurs focus intensely on an opportunity where others see nothing. This focus and intensity helps to eliminate wasted effort and distractions. Most companies die from indigestion rather than starvation, i.e., companies suffer from doing too many things at the same time rather than doing too few things very well.

I've always been a strong supporter of environmental protection and initiatives in that area. But I'm willing to set priorities. If we have to make reductions in one place, we'll have to-in order to increase another place, I'm willing to do that.

It is not possible to spend on one thing and then not have consequences on something else.

The reality is that we are all economists. We all deal with scarcity as we make choices and calculate how to ration various items and resources that we consume, produce and utilize.

Strategy 101 is about choices: You can't be all things to all people.

Saying 'yes' to one thing means saying 'no' to another. That's why decisions can be hard sometimes.

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.

Because economics is all about optimising, doing the best you can with what you have - it's usually the first place you should look for answers if you want to maximise your happiness.

Be careful not to compromise what you want most for what you want now.

In business, staying focused requires that you turn most opportunities down.

I made a cold calculation that I wasn’t going to waste time on a futile struggle.

Economics is a choice between alternatives all the time. Those are the trade-offs.

If you get an opportunity, you get an opportunity, but it really comes down to the people behind the scenes and the manager. You can't do anything about it.

One must say no to some opportunities to open the possibilities of others.

When something becomes a business, 50% of your decisions are what you have to do and not what you want to do.

The cool thing about a start-up - this is sort of the entrepreneur side of me - is that you can make it grow as much as you can. Or you can squander the talent as much as you want. But it's up to you.

I don't know what exactly the translation is but when we do consume something now, something else has to give at some point.

Everything is a tradeoff. Everywhere you leave, you leave some good things. The more successful you are, the harder it is to make tradeoffs. That's why some people become successful and then become flat. Be willing to give up income for potential, for opportunity.