Samuel Johnson Quotes

Study the situation thoroughly, go over in your imagination the various courses of action possible to you and the consequences which can and may follow from each course. Pick out the course which gives the most promise and go ahead.

I'm very careful not to have ideas, because they're inaccurate.

One of the things Mr. Kennedy taught me was that in laying out a new project, you shouldn't try to cope with every little problem.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

You have to have conviction and completely question everything and anything you do. No matter how much you study, no matter how much you know, the side of your brain that has the smarts won't necessarily help you in making art.

Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.

At a very young age I was predicting outcomes, trying to take all the information and find the best route to wherever I was going. I avoided a lot of pitfalls because of that.

The great problem now is that we don’t know what to do.

I try to look at problems very clearly and think, 'How do we get out of this? What will work? What will be the consequences for the people involved?'

Critical thinking is the most important factor with chess. As it is in life, you need to think before you make decisions.

You've got to be smart about tackling.

Writing is sort of like chess for me. You have to think carefully before you move, thinking, planning.

Life is very much about making the best decisions you can. So I think chess is very valuable.

I'm always doubtful. Everything I do is always doubtful. When you're trying to differentiate, there's going to be this gut sense, is this right? If you're not having doubt, then you're not pushing it hard enough, or you're not looking at the details close enough. You need to be feeling that doubt every single day.

I often try to think about, What sounds like a bad idea, but if you find the right plan of attack, it's actually a really good idea? I spend a lot of time really trying to systematically tackle problems from different angles.

Whenever I think about an issue, I always argue the opposite side of it. So, when I ultimately decide on a course of action, I've already been through all the conceivable scenarios, and I'm going to go for it.

Usually, I'm pretty good about sorting through the options and then making decisions that I'm confident are the best decisions in that moment, given the information we have. But there are times where I think I wish I could have imagined a different level of insight.

People always say they can't do things, that they're impossible. They just haven't been creative enough.

One cannot leap a chasm in two jumps.

When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion... Now, is the confusion's because we're all some kind of apes that are kind of stupid working against this, trying to figure out [how] to put the two sticks together to reach the banana and we can't quite make it... So I always feel stupid. Once in a while, though, the sticks go together on me and I reach the banana.

When you have a time of crisis what happens depends on what ideas are floating around, and what ideas have been developed, and thought through, and are made effective.

In all cases where doubt crops up, ask yourself, "If I had a gun to my head and had to do it, how would I do it?" It's not as hard as you think.

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't.

You always, I think, debate with yourself about whether or not you made the right decision. And you have to then give the person that you’re working for - in my instance, the president - your best judgment based on your understanding of the facts, but also the calculus you use to make a determination about what’s the best way to go forward.

Success takes communication, collaboration and, sometimes, failure.