Jim Butcher Quotes

I make all my decisions on intuition. But then, I must know why I made that decision. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.

I don't make decisions with my heart, I use my brain to think things through.

Thinking. A process by which I use my brain to make a rational decision.

My intellect has always been more responsible than my emotions for how I respond to the world.

It's hard to do that with people who think emotionally. A lot of people think in terms of people, emotions, and feelings. That's more complicated. Engineering mentality makes it, in theory, a little easier.

I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.

Italians think with their heads.

When we can't see a pattern, we fit pieces together until one takes shape, because we have to.

you have to play it out sometimes.

If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.

What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?

I probably thought that about most of the things I did. But you wind up in situations where you have to make decisions very quickly, and you just go for it a lot of the time.

Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.

In a world that's changing so quickly, you're guaranteed to fail if you don't take any risks.

Faith is a choice like any other. If you're picking a career or a husband - or deciding whether to have a baby - there are feelings and reasons pro and con out the wazoo. But thinking it through is - at the final hour - horse dookey. You can only try out.

You can't just have a thought. You have to follow the thought through. But everything starts with the thought.

Most decisions are seat-of-the-pants judgments. You can create a rationale for anything. In the end, most decisions are based on intuition and faith.

There is nothing higher than reason.

You will be right, over the course of many transactions, if your hypotheses are correct, your facts are correct, and your reasoning is correct. True conservatism is only possible through knowledge and reason.

Zoroaster said, when in doubt abstain; but this does not always apply. At cards, when in doubt take the trick.

You have to choose the move that feels right sometimes; that's what intuition is.

Science is the only true guide in life.

Load the ship and set out. No one knows for certain whether the vessel will sink or reach the harbor. Cautious people say, 'I'll do nothing until I can be sure.' Merchants know better. If you do nothing, you lose. Don't be one of those merchants who wont risk the ocean.

Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.