There is, therefore, wisdom in reserving one's decisions as long as possible and until all the facts and forces that will be potent at the moment are revealed.
Decide which is the line of conduct that presents the fewest drawbacks and then follow it out as being the best one, because one never finds anything perfectly pure and unmixed, or exempt from danger.
[When I ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan] that was the first time in which I looked out at a crowd of West Point graduates and knew that some of those might not come back because of that decision.
You know, one day you're being briefed on world affairs and asked to make decisions, and the next, you're in Crawford, Texas ... and the biggest decision is when do you go mountain bike riding.
I said, going into Iraq, "We've got to take threats seriously before they full materialize." I saw a threat. I fully believe it was the right decision to remove Saddam Hussein, and I fully believe the world is better off without him.
This administration is doing everything we can to end the stalemate in an efficient way. We're making the right decisions to bring the solution to an end.
Collective wisdom is about our capacity to recognize interdependence and to make decisions demonstrating that we have a stake in each other, that we can indeed care for each other and the physical planet we share.