79 Decisions Quotes

Making decisions is an integral part of life, shaping our paths and guiding our journeys. Whether they are monumental choices or everyday selections, the decisions we make reflect our values, aspirations, and courage. In this post, we've curated a collection of the top 79 decisions quotes to inspire and motivate you. These quotes come from a diverse array of thinkers, leaders, and visionaries, each offering a unique perspective on the power and significance of decision-making. Dive in and let their wisdom guide you when you find yourself at a crossroads.

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

2. “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

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

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

5. “The friends who met here and embraced are gone,Each to his own mistake;” - W.H. Auden

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

7. “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

8. “And it is clear to Evan, now: the difference between what is and what has been done; the present and the past. He sees that what he does and who he is isn't based on the past unless he wants it to be... No. That is the past, which has been seen differently through many different eyes and has become hazy and unclear, like a pond when stirred with a stick. Only the present moment is clear and free from prejudice.” - Garth Stein

9. “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

10. “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

11. “Can't it be stopped?" said Lina. She shifted around under her blanket, trying to find a place to sit where rocks weren't digging into her.Maybe it can be stopped at the beginning," Maddy said. "If someone sees what's happening and is brave enough to reverse the direction."Reverse the direction?"Yes, turn it around."How would you do that?"You'd do something good," said Maddy. "Or at least you'd keep yourself from doing something bad."But how could you?" said Lina. "When people have been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?"You wouldn't want to," said Maddy. "That's what makes it hard. you do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad.” - Jeanne DuPrau

12. “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

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

14. “The sheer novelty and glamor of the Western diet, with its seventeen thousand new food products every year and the marketing power - thirty-two billion dollars a year - used to sell us those products, has overwhelmed the force of tradition and left us where we now find ourselves: relying on science and journalism and government and marketing to help us decide what to eat.” - Michael Pollan

15. “Not to decide is to decide.” - Harvey Cox

16. “She has gone back to Brooklyn,' her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmire Bridge on its way towards Wexford, Eilis imagined the years already when these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself. She almost smiled at the thought of it, then closed her eyes and tried to imagine nothing more.” - Colm Tóibín

17. “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

18. “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

19. “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

20. “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

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

22. “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

23. “There is history the way Tolstoy imagined it, as a great, slow-moving weather system in which even tsars and generals are just leaves before the storm. And there is history the way Hollywood imagines it, as a single story line in which the right move by the tsar or the wrong move by the general changes everything. Most of us, deep down, are probably Hollywood people. We like to invent “what if” scenarios--what if x had never happened, what if y had happened instead?--because we like to believe that individual decisions make a difference: that, if not for x, or if only there had been y, history might have plunged forever down a completely different path. Since we are agents, we have an interest in the efficacy of agency.” - Louis Menand

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

25. “Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.” - E.E. Cummings

26. “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

27. “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

28. “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

29. “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

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

31. “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

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

33. “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

34. “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

35. “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

36. “The decision is mine, and I choose happiness” - Malori Howell

37. “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

38. “…There are times when something is asked of us, and we find we must do it. There is no calculation involved, no measure of the necessity of the thing itself, the action that must be performed. There is simply an acknowledgment that we will do the thing in question, and then the thing is done, often at considerable personal cost. ""What goes into these decisions? What tiny factors, invisible, in the jutting edges of personality and circumstance, contribute to this inevitability?” - Jesse Ball

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

40. “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

41. “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

42. “The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.” - G.K. Chesterton

43. “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

44. “Someone once said anyone can be great under rosy circumstances, but the true test of character is measured by how well a person makes decisions during difficult times.” - Jack Gantos

45. “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

46. “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

47. “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

48. “Part of making a good decision is just making a decision. You can't always sit and weigh the pros and cons. There just isn't time for that. Making a good decision means sticking with your choice and dealing with what comes with it. Being able to deal with the consequences—that's making a good decision.” - J.X. Burros

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

50. “The answer is that there is no good answer. So as parents, as doctors, as judges, and as a society, we fumble through and make decisions that allow us to sleep at night--because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important than law.” - Jodi Picoult

51. “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

52. “If we actually thought about every decision we made, we'd be paralyzed ... You have to decide which decisions you're actually going to make, and then you have to let the rest of them go.” - David Levithan

53. “-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

54. “For what do you hunger, Lord?” Moneo ventured.“For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?”“You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind.” - Frank Herbert

55. “Do nothing, and nothing happens. Life is about decisions. You either make them or they're made for you, but you can't avoid them.” - Mhairi McFarlane

56. “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

57. “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

58. “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

59. “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

60. “Choice was dangerous: you had to forgo all other possibilities when you chose.” - J.K. Rowling

61. “...When a choice will make a real difference in our lives—obvious or not—and when we are living in tune with the Spirit and seeking his guidance, we can be sure we will receive the guidance we need to attain our goal.” - Dallin H. Oaks

62. “My bad luck got tangled up with my bad decisions, and I'm paying for it.” - Patrick Rothfuss

63. “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

64. “Don't overthink things. Sometimes you can convince your head not to listen to your heart. Those are the decisions you regret for the rest of your life." Faith Barnett From Texas Tangle” - Leah Braemel

65. “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

66. “Our decisions define our lives. We are the people we choose to be in the ways that most matter. Choose wisely. You will live with the choices you make.The choices you make define your character. And your character defines how you feel about yourself. That image of you is projected in hundreds of ways to others.” - Vicki Hinze

67. “Sometimes it's a good idea to think about what you want from a situation, and try to get it, rather than just blurt out the first thing that comes into your head.” - E. Lockhart

68. “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

69. “Every game is winnable if you change your mind about what the prize should be and your perspective about the players at the table.” - Shannon L. Alder

70. “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

71. “Every brush stroke on the canvas, every dab of color introduced, the fine textures impressed in the paint—this accumulation of many small acts combines to shape a final work of art.  And so it is with life; each step, each deed, each brief choice builds gradually, day by day, to shape both character and destiny.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

72. “Patience is the antidote to the restless poison of the Ego. Without it we all become ego-maniacal bulls in china shops, destroying our future happiness as we blindly rush in where angels fear to tread. In these out-of-control moments, we bulldoze through the best possible outcomes for our lives, only to return to the scene of the crime later to cry over spilt milk.” - Anthon St. Maarten

73. “A game like sardines is scary, not so much for the hider but for the seekers. It's scary because you lose your companions and the whole world creeps up quiet and you slowly realize you're going to stumble upon a secret place where everyone will jump out at you. And then, when you are the very last seeker, you start to wonder if you're the only person in the world. If the hiding place somehow sucked up the players and the last one has to decide to run away or get sucked up, too.” - Suzanne Palmieri

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

75. “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

76. “Even not choosing is a choice.” - Denise Grover Swank

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

78. “One of the most foolish of all human philosophies, is to believe that we all have an unavoidable destiny.” - Dennis E. Adonis

79. “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