110 Decisions Quotes

Navigating the complex web of choices we face daily can be daunting, but finding inspiration in the wisdom of others helps illuminate our path. In this collection, we've compiled the top 110 decisions quotes that capture the essence of making tough calls with courage, clarity, and conviction. Whether you're grappling with a life-altering decision or reflecting on past choices, these quotes offer timeless insights to guide and inspire you. Dive in and let the wisdom of renowned thinkers, leaders, and philosophers empower your decision-making journey.

1. “I must have a prodigious amount of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!” - Mark Twain

2. “When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.” - Horace Walpole

3. “Take risks! That is really what life is about. We must pursue our own happiness. Nobody has ever lived our lives; ther are no guidelines. Trust your instincts. Accept nothing but the best. But then also look for it carefully. Don't allow it to slip between your fingers. Sometimes, good things come to us in a such a quiet fashion. And nothing comes complete. It is what we make of whatever we encounter that determines the outcome. What we choose to see, what we choose to save. And what we choose to remember. Never forget that all the love in your life is there, inside you, always.” - Linda Olsson

4. “Once a decision was made, I didn't worry about it afterward...” - Harry S. Truman

5. “It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.” - Elbert Hubbard

6. “Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.” - Jared Diamond

7. “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

8. “Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.” - Malcolm Gladwell

9. “If small groups are included in the decision-making process, then they should be allowed to make decisions. If an organization sets up teams and then uses them for purely advisory purposes, it loses the true advantage that a team has: namely, collective wisdom.” - James Surowiecki

10. “Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.” - James Surowiecki

11. “No decision-making system is going to guarantee corporate success. The strategic decisions that corporations have to make are of mind-numbing complexity. But we know that the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made.” - James Surowiecki

12. “Don't ascribe to evil what can be attributed to well-intentioned stupidity.” - James A. Owen

13. “I don’t even have a choice. Rachel thought how that was pretty much true of everything now, that you got one choice at the beginning but if you didn’t choose right, and she hadn’t, things got narrow real quick. Like trying to wade a river, she thought. You take a wrong step and set your foot on a wobbly rock or in a drop-off and you’re swept away, and all you can do then is try to survive. (83)” - Ron Rash

14. “Do you want to be with Dave for the rest of your life?” Then he rips off a piece of paper and picks upthe smallest charcoal stick from my set. He writes something. He passes it over to me.It says:Time will tell.“And while you’re waiting,” he says, “don’t settle for anything less than what you really want.” - Susane Colasanti

15. “Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.” - Viktor E. Frankl

16. “Jump or stay in the boat.” - Margaret Stohl

17. “Every day you face two important decisions: what effect you want your speech and actions to have on the world around you, and what impressions and vibrations you want to be receptive to.” - Kalashatra Govinda

18. “The native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; and enterprises of great pitch and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.” - William Shakespeare

19. “But time has a way of stealthily deciding a person’s mind without her conscious knowledge, and as she studied and procrastinated, Poison found one day that she had come to know her choice.” - Chris Wooding

20. “There must be a few times in life when you stand at a precipice of a decision. When you know there will forever be a Before and an After...I knew there would be no turning back if I designated this moment as my own Prime Meridian from which everything else would be measured.” - Justina Chen Headley

21. “There is nothing in the world so difficult as that task of making up one's mind. Who is there that has not longed that the power and privilege of selection among alternatives should be taken away from him in some important crisis of his life, and that his conduct should be arranged for him, either this way or that, by some divine power if it were possible, - by some patriarchal power in the absence of divinity, - or by chance, even, if nothing better than chance could be found to do it? But no one dares to cast the die, and to go honestly by the hazard. There must be the actual necessity of obeying the die, before even the die can be of any use.” - Anthony Trollope

22. “Be aware that how you feel has a direct impact on your thinking process. When we set standards for ourselves they seem objective, but standards and goal-setting are totally subjective and personal." From The Biology of Success.” - Robert Arnot

23. “The hardest thing about the road not taken is that you never know where it might have led.” - Lisa Wingate

24. “Havin to make all the rules, all the time, wasn’t never my idea of a party.” - Todd Johnson

25. “You can't make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.” - Michelle Obama

26. “Mom always liked to say that we hardly ever know the decisions we make that change our lives, mostly because they are little ones. You took this bus instead of that one and ended up meeting your soul mate, that kind of thing. But there was no doubt in my mind that this was one of those life-changing moments.” - Rachel Hawkins

27. “I wish I could turn back time, but I can't. I made a stupid decision because I thought I was invincible, and I'll pay for it the rest of my life.” - Simone Elkeles

28. “you must be careful never to allow doubt to paralyze you. always take the decisions you need to take, even if you're not sure you're doing the right thing. You'll never go wrong if, when you make a decision, you keep in mind an old German proverb: 'The devil is in the detail.' Remember that proverb and you'll always be able to turn a wrong decision into a right one.” - Paulo Coelho

29. “Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.” - Mary Balogh

30. “What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient.” - Bodie Thoene

31. “It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” - Roy Disney

32. “The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

33. “Question.""Yes," Candace asked expectantly, eyes fixed on the dark street ahead."Have you ever had to chose sides between a friend and a boyfriend?"Candace nodded."Which side are you suppose to pick?""The right one.""What if they're both right?""They're not.""But they are," Melody insisted. "That's the problem.""No." Candace slowly rolled past a police cruiser. "They both think they're right. But who do you think is right? Which side represents the thing you think is worth fighting for?"Melody glanced out the window as though she was expecting the answer to be revealed on a neighbor's lawn. Every house except hers had the lights turned off. "I dunno.""You do," Candace insisted. "You just don't have the courage to be honest with yourself. Because then you'd have to do the thing you don't want to do, and you hate doing anything that's hard. Which is why you gave up singing and why you have no life and why you've always been a -""Um okay! Can we get back to the part where you were sounding like Oprah?""I'm just saying, Melly, what would you do if you weren't afraid? That's your answer. That's your side." She turned into the circular driveway and put the SUV in PARK. "And if you don't choose it, you're lying to yourself and everyone around you." She opened the door and grabbed her purse. "Oprah out!"The door slammed behind her.” - Lisi Harrison

34. “Tiene más filo una decisión que una gillette en la espalda.” - Fito Paez

35. “He himself, he realized, had always been most abominably frightened, even at the height of his divine power, a frail god upon a rickety throne, afraid of opening letters, of making decisions, afraid of the instinctive knowledge in the eyes of mules, of the innocent eyes of good men, of the elastic nature of the passions, even of the devotion he had received from some men, and one woman, and dogs.” - Patrick White

36. “Big decisions in my life have always come easy and are made without hesitation. It is easier for me to make a life-changing decision than to decide what to get for dessert.” - Tony Hawk

37. “We suddenly feel fearful and apprehensive, naked in our perishable flesh, and for just a moment we wish we could go back to being stone—crumbling in death rather than rotting, trapped inside an immobile prison of stone rather than reduced to immaterial souls like those that now rattled within our skulls. The moment passes. There is no point in regretting irreversible decisions—one has to live with them, and we try.” - Ekaterina Sedia

38. “There are two decisions you need to make after you have accepted Jesus into your life. One: You need to make the decision to get over your past. You will not grow unless you make a conscious decision to get over your past. Two: Once you have made that decision, you need to trust God to help you get over your past...You didn’t just automatically become a Christian, did you? You weren’t made a Christian by just going to church. Just like you are not made a car by sitting in a garage all day! You have to make a decision.” - Corallie Buchanan

39. “I was only able to get over my past when I decided I was going to! As I’ve discovered, that’s how everything starts. I decided to get out of bed this morning. I decided to get ready for work (D’oh! Another early morning). Everything I did today was because I made a decision. Although we can’t set ourselves free, getting up and making a decision to move on from our past is a step in the right direction. We can’t do God’s part, and He won’t do our part. He can’t make that decision for you, because only you can. But once you have made that decision, He can help you with the rest.” - Corallie Buchanan

40. “That was how it was, sometimes. You put yourself in front of the thing and waited for whatever was going to happen and that was all. It scared you and it didn't matter. You stood and faced it. There was no outwitting anything. When Almondine had been playful, she had been playful in the face of that knowledge, as defiant as before the rabid thing. Sometimes you looked the thing in the eye and it turned away. Sometimes it didn't.” - David Wroblewski

41. “The aspirations of democracy are based on the notion of an informed citizenry, capable of making wise decisions. The choices we are asked to make become increasingly complex. They require the longer-term thinking and greater tolerance for ambiguity that science fosters. The new economy is predicated on a continuous pipeline of scientific and technological innovation. It can not exist without workers and consumers who are mathematically and scientifically literate. ” - Ann Druyan

42. “This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever.” - Daniel Woodrell

43. “Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.” - Anne Enright

44. “Don't decide yet," Hephaestus advised. "Wait until daybreak. Daybreak is a good time for decisions.” - Rick Riordan

45. “Please do make your decisions in life and feel confident that they are right.However, if fate is involved, feel just as confident even if they aren’t.” - C. Elizabeth

46. “My father taught me that you can you read a hundred books on wisdom and write a hundred books on wisdom, but unless you apply what you learned then its only words on a page. Life is not lived with intentions, but action.” - Shannon Alder

47. “He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.” - Shannon L. Alder

48. “But he was able to understand one thing: making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.” - Paulo Coelho

49. “I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” - Sylvia Plath

50. “Don't entrust your future on others' hands. Rather make decisions by yourself with the help of God's guidance. Hold your beliefs so tight and never let go of them!” - Hark Herald Sarmiento

51. “Choice is the keynote of self-determinism. To determine anything, you must have the choice to determine. Choice to determine means that you must have the power of decision. Decision and time have a lot in common. When we have clean, clear decision, we have clean, clear time. And when we have indecision, there is an unclarity about time.” - L. Ron Hubbard

52. “Cassie: What would it cost me if I kissed him? What would it cost me if I didn’t?” - Melanie Cusick-Jones

53. “Even if the decisions one made on a given day seemed crazy, it helped to think that all things happened for a mysterious reason.” - Lorna Jane Cook

54. “All you can do is make your decisions based on what you know now.” - Malinda Lo

55. “When you walk into a chocolate store, suddenly the most difficult decision you will ever have to make in your life, is which chocolates to pick! It is pure torture! Especially when you are in Belgium surrounded by Belgian chocolates!” - C. JoyBell C.

56. “...we confidently say that it's not worth trying to reach any conclusions merely because we decide to stop halfway along the path that would lead us straight to them.” - José Saramago

57. “In life, you have to take lots of decisions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do.” - Mark Haddon

58. “When you don't change, history repeats itself. Then you have to decide if changing is for the best, or you keep seeing repeats because you're doing something right.” - Rebecca McKinsey

59. “It's not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What's hard, she said, is figuring out what you're willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.” - Shauna Niequist

60. “Whatever you decide, don't let it be because you don't think you have a choice.” - Hannah Harrington

61. “If you use a philosophy education well, you can get your foot in the door of any industry you please. Industries are like the blossoms on a tree while philosophy is the trunk - it holds the tree together, but it often goes unnoticed.” - Criss Jami

62. “No single decision you ever made has led in a straight line to where you find yourself now. You peeked down some roads and took a few steps before turning back. You followed some roads that came to a dead end and others that got lost at too many intersections. Ultimately, all roads are connected to all other roads.” - Deepak Chopra

63. “That's the thing about freewill: Every decision we make is a choice against something as much as it is for something else.” - Rebecca Serle

64. “Unfortunately, some family members are so psychotic that no matter how hard you try to forge a healthy relationship, nothing will help. Now that you're an adult, take refuge in the fact that some things are beyond your control. You owe it to yourself to steer clear of people who are harmful to your health.” - Andrea Lavinthal

65. “He felt that he was still groping in the dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way.” - J.K. Rowling

66. “Every time he tried to reconstruct the internal arguments that had led to his decision, they sounded feebler to him.” - J.K. Rowling

67. “Jesus told us to make disciples, not decisions.” - John Pereira

68. “You are honest enough by nature to be able to see and judge your own self clearly - and that is a great thing. Never lose that honesty, Bobby - always be honest with yourself, know your own motives for what they are, good or bad, make your own decisions firmly and justly - and you will be a fine, strong character, of some real use in this muddled world of ours!” - Enid Blyton

69. “People make decisions, and maybe you don't always agree, but those choices are still their own.” - Brenna Yovanoff

70. “Life is made up of chances to make choices, decisions of what you wish to do; the accumulated result of those choices is what you call your life.” - Steven Redhead

71. “-Elves never make any major decision until they have thought the matter over for at least a year or two, gone round to all their friends and relatives and discussed the problem, done research, read tomes, consulted the sages.-And what happens then?- By then they've usually forgotten what it was they meant to do in the first place.” - Margaret Weis

72. “Who can really say how decisions are made, how emotions change, how ideas arise? We talk about inspiration; about a bolt of lightnng from a clear sky, but perhaps everything is just as simple and just as infinitely complex as the processes that make a particular leaf fall at a particularmoment. That point has been reached, that's all. It has to happen, and it does happen.” - John Ajvide Lindqvist

73. “Deciding to commit yourself to long term results rather than short term fixes is as important as any decision you'll make in your lifetime.” - Anthony Robbins

74. “When she looked in the glass and saw her hair grey her cheek sunk, at fifty, she thought, possibly she might have managed things better--her husband; money; his books. But for her own part she would never for a single second regret her decision, evade difficulties, or slur over duties” - Virginia Woolf

75. “Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.” - Robert McKee

76. “On an important decision one rarely has 100% of the information needed for a good decision no matter how much one spends or how long one waits. And, if one waits too long, he has a different problem and has to start all over. This is the terrible dilemma of the hesitant decision maker.” - Robert K. Greenleaf

77. “They say faith is taking the first step when you can’t see the whole staircase. Actually, wisdom is seeing the elevator behind it that would have taken you to the top floor.” - Shannon L. Alder

78. “Miles added it to his life's lessons list. Call it Rule 27B. Never make key tactical decisions while having electro-convulsive seizures.” - Lois McMaster Bujold

79. “The reason I like the game chess is because each move has countless repercussions, but you're in charge of them. And it's your ability to see into the future and the effects of the decisions you've made that males you either a good or not a good chess player. It's not luck.” - Bono

80. “Don’t think about it. Don’t think about what could have been. It’s too unbearable.” - Sophie Kinsella

81. “And so back to Cassie: who was she? Part of the deception; just a friend or something else…perhaps it was time to find out.” - Melanie Cusick-Jones

82. “I blame Doctor Who. Mr Spock. The Scooby Gang: both the ones in the Mystery Machine and the ones with the stakes. I've spent my life with stories of people who don't walk away, who go back for their friends, who make that last stand. I've been brainwashed by Samwise Gamgee.” - Andrea K. Höst

83. “There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.” - Alain De Botton

84. “Possible is more a matter of attitude, A matter of decision, to choose Among the impossible possibilities, When one sound opportunity Becomes a possible solution.” - Dejan Stojanovic

85. “I had made a decision, although I hardly knew it yet. It's often that way with decisions, they're made in some hidden part of us and the awareness secretes itself slowly into that conscious part of us that imagines it decides.” - Neil Jordan

86. “A lot of things should have been, Zigmund, but they aren’t. Are you going to be miserable about the things you cannot change, or do something about the things you can?” - Melika Dannese Lux

87. “Thirteen years of friendship had bonded us together more thoroughly than if we had been born of the same mother. Even at this late stage, I was unwilling to let him go.” - Melika Dannese Lux

88. “This is your time. Make it count by dedicating your time to your Heavenly Father.” - Kristen Oaks

89. “Every decision has a consequence.” - Damon Darrell

90. “Sometimes the hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn” - Bertrand Russell

91. “It's like picking the place you're going to live for the next fifty years by using a wall map, a blindfold, and what you really, truly, deeply believe is your lucky dart.' Sullenly Judith said, `I don't believe I have a lucky dart,' and her mother cast an unhappy smile her way and said, `You will, though.” - Tom McNeal

92. “Some decisions in life naturally lead to an unhappy ending, leaving you sinking by degrees in a lake of quicksand.  And, unless someone reaches to pull you out, chances are you will drown in the consequences.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

93. “The course of history is determined not by battles, by sieges, or usurpation, but by the individuals. The strongest army is, at its most basic level, a collection of individuals. Their decisions, their passions, their foolishness, and their dreams shape the years to come. If there is any lesson to be learned from history, it is that all too often the fate of armies, of cities, of entire realms rests upon the actions of one person's decision, good or bad, right or wrong, big or small, can unwittingly change the world.But history can be quite the slattern. One never knows who that person is, where he might be, or what decision he might male.It is almost enough to make me believe in destiny.” - Jim Butcher

94. “Many people fail in their career, business and relationship, and others get stuck because of their inability to make quality decisions.” - Nkem Mpamah

95. “Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life.” - Shannon L. Alder

96. “Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyone has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them. If you are influenced by "opinions" when you reach DECISIONS, you will not succeed in any undertaking.” - Napoleon Hill

97. “Circumstances don't determine who you are, or what you will be. Only you do that. You either decide, or you don't. Even the decision not to decide was still yours.” - Julie-Anne

98. “Sometimes I think if we didn’t have these problems the whole world would stop spinning on her axis, we’d all stop spinning on our axises, axes, or whatever you want to call them, and then we’d have to settle into the nasty business of finding a way to be happy.” - Daniel Clausen

99. “You will find that people will always have opinions about your decisions. Don’t take it personally, it’s simply because they're not courageous enough to take action in their own lives. Be a leader in your life and pay no mind to those who lack the courage to do the same in theirs.” - Steve Maraboli

100. “Cut away the nonsense, the drama, the regret, the scars of the past, and make a decision to no longer let them govern your happiness and freedom.” - Steve Maraboli

101. “It was too late - everything was too late. For years now he had dreamed the world away, basing his decisions upon emotions unstable as water.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

102. “The ignoramus crow of "love it or leave it" omits other viable options, such as staying and changing it.” - Bryant McGill

103. “I wouldn't want to live that life. I choose the pain. I chose the pain.” - Suzanne Palmieri

104. “The measure of a man comes down to moments, spread out like dots of pain on the canvas on life. Everything you were, everything you'll someday be, resides in the small, seemingly ordinary choices of everyday life.....Each decision seems as insignificant as a left turn on an unfamiliar road when you have no destination in mind. But the decisions accumulate until you realize one day that they've made you the man that you are.” - Kristin Hannah

105. “If I ever have to cast an acting role, I want the wrong person for the part. I can never visualize the right person in a part. The right person for the right part would be too much. Besides, no person is every completely right for any part, because part in a role is never real, so if you can't get someone who's perfectly right, it's more satisfying to get someone who's perfectly wrong. Then you know you've really got something.” - Andy Warhol

106. “We are the sum total of the decisions we have made.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

107. “Decisions Determine the directions of your destiny” - Bobby Sullivan

108. “Better to be happy with the cod fish in your plate now, than to linger for the taste of a tuna that is still swimming in the sea.” - Dennis E. Adonis

109. “Life is a journey that gives you the liberty to draw your own map, and choose your own route.” - Dennis E. Adonis

110. “I had reclusive tendencies for a reason, I couldn’t be trusted to live in the world and make decisions on my own.” - Penny Reid