Whether you make simple decisions like choosing an outfit or much harder decisions like a career, where to live, or what car to buy, you may make hundreds of decisions every day.
Jump ahead to these sections:
- Quotes About Decision Making and Consequences
- Quotes About Decision Making in Your Career or Business
- Quotes About Decision Making in Love
- Funny Quotes About Decision Making
- Quotes About Poor Decision Making
To help provide insight, wisdom, and a little levity, we found some of the best quotations about decision making for you to read.
Quotes About Decision Making and Consequences
All decisions will have consequences, whether good or bad. If you need help figuring out how to make a hard decision, maybe these quotes will give you the inspiration you need.
1. "We all make choices, but in the end, our choices make us." — Ken Levine
Ultimately, what we decide has the potential to shape our day, year, and even our destinies.
2. "We are free to choose our paths, but we can't choose the consequences that come with them." — Sean Covey
Every decision will bring about some form of consequences. We can make our own choices but we should do so carefully.
3. "When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it." — Lois McMaster Bujold
Sometimes we can see the outcome of a decision before we make it. Make choices that produce outcomes you want.
4. "Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance." — C.S. Lewis
Even the smallest decisions in our daily lives can have vast importance. Make decisions each day you'll feel good about later.
5. “There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments — there are consequences.” — Robert G. Ingersoll
Consequences might end up good or bad, depending on the choices we make. If you want good consequences from your actions, choose to act wisely.
Quotes About Decision Making in Your Career or Business
As with life, we make many decisions about our careers or businesses. These choices might seem especially difficult when they directly impact those who work for you. Read on to gather wisdom and insight for your decision-making journey.
6. "Make a living by doing what you enjoy, and you never have to work a day in your life." — Mark Twain
This saying has been placed on everything from motivational posters to high school notebooks. Find a job you love won't make work seem so much like “work.”
7. "The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers." — M. Scott Peck
If you’re ready for a change or you want to start something new, why not now? Ask yourself why you want a change, then go for it.
8. "Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning." — Gloria Steinem
What do you want to accomplish in your career or your business? Accomplishing it starts with making a plan. Making a plan starts with dreaming.
9. "The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward." — Amelia Earhart
Making the choice to change career paths, start a new business, or create a new product involves a feat all in itself. Sometimes you just have to make the choice to act, then great things will follow.
10. "Write your own book instead of reading someone else’s book about success." — Herb Brooks
Dream your own dreams, create your own accomplishments, and build a life that you love. Don't just read books about other people's successes. Write your own story.
Quotes About Decision Making in Love
Dating, getting married, knowing when to back out: Relationships can seem nerve-wracking and sometimes downright heartbreaking. Read through some thought-provoking quotes that just might help you make decisions, including quotes about reuniting.
11. "Leaving the person I love in danger and continuing to live on is the same as being dead." — Higuchi Tachibana
Naturally, you always want to make sure your loved ones feel safe, healthy, and well at all times. Sometimes that means making a hard decision to get loved ones the help they need — doing so always makes them feel better than leaving them in danger.
12. "Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision?" — Erich Fromm
We can make the decision to love when we’re feeling good and life is great just as much as we can choose to love when life has gotten us down.
13. "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." — Lao Tzu
Being loved gives you the ability to do great things in life. Love, while sometimes scary, gives you the courage to put your heart on the line and share your life with someone else.
14. "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." — Alfred Lord Tennyson
This famous quote always rings true. It is better to have given your heart to someone who loved you in return than to have never loved at all.
15. "You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." — Dr. Seuss
Wondering whether you should stay in a relationship? Consider this quote. Give it some time and you’ll know whether you want to stay in it or whether you should start searching for ways to say goodbye.
Funny Quotes About Decision Making
Tap into a few quotes to make you smile while in the throes of decision-making.
16. "You can only be young once, but you can always be immature" — Dave Barry
Leave it to Dave Barry to make you grin.
17. "The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Do you understand?" — Jack Sparrow
Wondering what to do when you don’t know what to do? Consider this quote. Decision-making can feel frustrating, disheartening, and downright discouraging sometimes. Keep smiling, cheer up, and simply do your best with the decisions you have to make.
18. "In my house, I’m the boss, my wife is just the decision-maker." — Woody Allen
Comedian Woody Allen knows who actually makes the decisions. Does this sound familiar in your household?
19. "Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right." — Henry Ford
If you think you can’t do something, you probably won’t. But if you think you can, you’ll at least try, and trying (and not quitting) can really make things happen. You might even amaze yourself!
Quotes About Poor Decision Making
Sometimes you make a decision you wish you hadn’t. Making good choices and avoiding poor decisions goes back to considering the choices you make.
20. "If, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt." — Jose Saramago
Think about the end results of the choices you make well before you make them. When you foresee the result of a decision, you avoid those that might cause disaster.
21. "Choices made, whether bad or good, follow you forever and affect everyone in their path one way or another." — J.E.B. Spredemann
Simply thinking about this quote might make you pause before you make an important decision. Decisions impact everyone around us, so make sure your decisions help yourself and others.
Decide Wisely
Decisions come to us in all shapes and sizes, from simple questions to those that shape our lives. Approach the decision-making process with thoughtfulness so you can walk confidently forward after you make your final decision.