In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment-independent will-that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.
Stephen R. Covey
American Speaker, Trainer, Author of ''The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People''
Everything starts with yourself -- with you making up your mind about what you're going to do with your life. I tell kids that it's a cruel world, and that the world will bend them either left or right, and it's up to them to decide which way to bend.
Decision is a sharp knife that cuts or to do anything, never to turn back or to stop until the thing intended was clean and straight; indecision, a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it.
In making our decisions, we must use the brains that God has given us. But we must also use our hearts which He also gave us. A man who has not learned to say, ''No'' --who is not resolved that he will take God's way, in spite of every dog that can bay or bark at him, in spite of every silvery choice that woos him aside--will be a weak and a wretched man till he dies.
Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader. Don't fall victim to what I call the Ready- Aim-Aim-Aim Syndrome. You must be willing to fire.
T. Boone Pickens
American Businessman, Chairman of Mesa Petroleum
In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
Theodore Roosevelt
1858-1919, Twenty-sixth President of the USA
