Niki Tsongas Quotes

I think an important lesson from the game is that once you have made a move, you cannot take it back. You really have to measure your decisions. You think a lot. You evaluate your choices very carefully. There's never any guarantee about what's going to follow once you have made a decision.

The decision to put American lives at risk is a decision that has a very high hurdle to pass.

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?'

Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.

There is danger in this action. But there is greater danger in inaction.

[Cost-benefit analysis is used:] ... to produce lofty academic-sounding reasons for endless inaction.

The statesman must weigh the rewards of success against the penalties of failure. And he is permitted only one guess.

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

When you start a military intervention, you do not know what will happen even in the next hour

The power of uncontrollable decision is of the most delicate and dangerous nature.

If individuals have no sufficient reason to believe that a good situation today will have adverse long-term consequences, it must always be rational for them to aim to maximize their short-term good.

To remove or not to remove? That is the question.

When a government faces an evil that might be avoided, the usual pattern is to first debate whether or not the evil is real or imagined; then determine how evil it really is; then is it an appropriate function of government to avoid it? Then what are the alternative ways to avoid it? Then what are the costs to avoid it? And finally, is the benefit of avoiding the evil worth the cost? In those cases where it is, it is by this time too late to avoid the evil and discussions shift to ameliorating the evil.

Hawks usually care about benefits; doves most about costs. Neither benefits or costs however are easily estimated in advance.

In covert action you always have to think of the endgame before you start it. We didn’t always do that.

Tis easy to see, hard to foresee.

Every good businessman or woman carefully analyzes all the available facts before making a decision.

I can't ever remember being struck by lightning when making a big decision. It's always about taking in more and more data points and making tack adjustments as you figure it out. I call customers, suppliers, industry analysts and try to get as much information as possible.

We necessarily operate in an environment in which there's a great deal of uncertainty. In such an environment, it makes sense to use a risk-management approach to identify and avoid the big mistakes. That's one reason I favor a cautious approach.

Don't avoid doing something wondering what its consequences may be. Give it a thought, break it down, and consider what really may happen rather than not do it at all.

Managers can make themselves look strong by selling or dropping players, but if the move doesn't work, the choice looks flawed.

Trying to predict the future is a loser's game.

I have taken restarts and have come to the conclusion myself that I can't give NASCAR that opportunity to penalize me.

Valuations are always much-debated. I try to center on what is the value to us. Is it solving a problems for us? If it is, we find a way to proceed. If the valuation has been overhyped on something and it doesn't make sense, we won't. It's very simple for me. I tend not to worry too much about the valuation. It's really what the value is to us.

The success of a particular policy prescription is always a gamble.