Critical Moments Quotes

Great events ever depend but upon a single hair. The adroit man profits by everything, neglects nothing which can increase his chances; the less adroit, by sometimes disregarding a single chance, fails in everything.

The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.

When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

In critical moments even the very powerful have need of the weakest.

Every life has forks in the road. And sometimes, the tines of that fork stab deep.

But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.

nothing happens in August - except when something really happens in August. World War I began in August, Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait began in August, al Qaida was preparing to bring down the World Trade Center in August. August, in other words, is the time when all of us should prepare our backup plans, chart our reversals of course, [and] think through possible paradigm changes.

Imaginative, sanguine men will never recognize that in negotiations the most dangerous moment of all is when everything is moving according to their wishes.

Every life has a watershed moment, an instant when you realize you're about to make a choice that will define everything else you ever do, and that if you choose wrong, there may not be that many things left to choose. Sometimes the wrong choice is the only one that lets you face the end with dignity, grace, and the awareness that you're doing the right thing. I'm not sure we can recognize those moments until they've passed us.

The close games are usually lost, rather than won. What I mean by that is games are mostly won because of the opponent making mistakes during crucial moments.

It's kind of funny...the moments on which life hinges. I think growing up you always imagine your life - your success - depends on your family and how much money they have, where you go to college, what sort of job you can pin down, starting salary...But it doesn't, you know. You wouldn't believe this, but life hinges on a couple of seconds you never see coming. And what you decide in those few seconds determines everything from then on... And you have no idea what you'll do until you're there.

Crisis is not a nine-to-five job... Crisis happens when you least expect it.

My forte was the middlegame. I had a good feeling for the critical moments of the play. This undoubtedly compensated for my lack of opening preparation and, possibly, not altogether perfect play in the endgame. In my games things often did not reach the endgame!

The best indicator of a Chess Player's form is his ability to sense the Climax of the game.

You will not be able to tell that they are capable of greatness until you provide them with a packed house, a 3-and-2 count and the game is on the line.

Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.

Every step of the way I think you learn something that makes you a better player, and all those lessons really come out when it matters the most in a championship.

A battle sometimes decides everything; and sometimes the most trifling thing decides the fate of a battle.

I want to get to the 'pick your poison' type of situations like James Harden.

We all are motivated by deep impulses and deep appetites to serve, even though we may not be able to locate that which we are hoping to serve. So this is just a part of my nature and I think everybody else's nature to offer oneself at the critical moment when the emergency becomes articulate. It's only then that we can locate that willingness to serve.

You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.

Every young lady may feel for my heroine in this critical moment, for every young lady has at some time or other known the same agitation.

Mathematics is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst.

No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individual.

The most decisive actions of our life - I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future - are, more often than not, unconsidered.