Andy Stanley Quotes

There's a gray area there that I'm satisfied is not gray.

A president, like a college freshman, can't know in advance which questions he'll have to answer or what topics he'll have to master. He has to be flexible, supple, and responsive. He has to be comfortable with multiple-choice.

So key for making smart decisions is a mindset that actively monitors and is open to shifting tides and new information, one that is acutely aware that the interplay between our environment and its outcomes is ever in flux.

I'm a wonderful editor. That's what I do best. I know exactly what I want. If I have to decide whether to wear the red dress or the blue dress or what should I have said, I am constantly changing my mind.

Investing is about making probabilistic decisions with limited information about an unknowable future. The variables are well known, as are the possible outcomes.

There is no single right answer or path forward, but there is one right way to frame the problem.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

Today, if you are not confused, you are not thinking clearly.

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

As an intelligence analyst you have to tell the president what you know, what you think you know and what you don’t know.

At the end of the day, none of us are the Oracle of Delphi, so we don't get everything right. It's always good to be able to listen and to take on what seems to be the right thing to do.

Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do: when neither innateness nor learning has prepared you for the particular situation.

Part of the reason there's an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you're in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let's say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

People who are great at making decisions in the face of uncertainty have great judgment.

Indecision is the key to flexibility.

When you know what's most important to you, making a decision is quite simple. Most people, though, are unclear about what's most important in their lives, and thus decision making becomes a form of internal torture.

If a player is not performing, there are two ways of looking at it. You wait for performance to come, or maybe the moment has arrived where you have to change. I could go either way.

It is the job of leaders to eliminate uncertainty.

Confusion is better than stupid conclusions. In confusion, there is still a possibility. In stupid conclusion, there is no possibility.

Throughout history, one of the biggest problems is that the correct course of action is not always obvious, and the obvious course of action is not always correct.

Investment decisions and personal decisions don't wait for the picture to be clarified.

I would rather be of clear mind and decision with the wrong club than with an unclear mind and the right club.

All decisions are made on insufficient evidence.

When I get the point, I often don't know what to do with it.