Cautious Decision Making Quotes

There's a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.

He who hesitates is sometimes wise.

One cool judgement is worth a thousand hasty councils.

Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.

A prudent man should neglect no circumstances.

I think before I act---and then think again. I am not entirely a coward, but I do not lose myself in action as you do.

Think before you act and then act decisively. Fortune favors the brave.

To relinquish a present good through apprehension of a future evil is in most instances unwise ... from a fear which may afterwards turn out groundless, you lost the good that lay within your grasp.

I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect, and out of all of this I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can. I shall not speak much for fear of saying foolish things; I will risk still less for fear of doing them, for I am not disposed to abuse the confidence which they have deigned to show me. Such is the conduct which until now I have followed and will follow.

When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.

Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.

We shouldn't knee jerk anything. The Iraqi government a few years back, when they had a chance to sign an agreement that would keep some of our presence there, refused to do it. So we've got to be very careful and thoughtful before we do anything.

Caution is an important quality in a leader, but it has to be caution followed by decision. Caution followed by ambivalence can be a weakness.

I will reflect a thousand times over before I allow the German Volk to become entangled in agreements whose consequences are not readily evident.

Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.

I think it remains a film-by-film process, and since I am relatively selective and slow, it can take a while.

Producers are men who will keep their heads in the noisy presence of writers and directors and not be carried away by art in any of its subversive guises. Their task is to guard against the unusual. They are the trusted loyalists of cliche.

Do you know what happens when you always look before you leap?" She reached out and touched his hand before hurrying toward the door. "You hardly ever make the jump.

We should not get ourselves committed until we know how everything will come out.

I will not let anyone carry out hasty legislation … It must be done with reverence, slowly, one step at a time.

I don’t want to throw everything away for something uncertain.

I wish somebody told me don't take candy from strangers when I made my first tax-free Internet purchase. I wish that I had remembered the first one's free, which is how dealers make new junkies. I wish that every cliche humanity acquired to protect itself from its history of bamboozlement and trickery was sewn on every shirt pocket by a smart mom.

The less prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we should conduct our own affairs.

Something that I tell myself every morning when I wake up is like: "Think it over, take the time to think it over." I don't like spontaneity, there you go. I'm wary of it.