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.
Rhetoric is useful because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible. Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible.
[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.
I have made a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say: He shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have made that decision. And I'll take responsibility for them. I'm human.
Investment in the eradication of hunger today is a good business decision. If we fail to make this investment, it is doubtful that we can sustain healthy economic growth. Without this investment, our nation may disintegrate into a country sharply divided between those who have enough to eat and those who do not.
I suppose it is a bit of a date that we're having at the moment. As is usually the case you don't get married on a first date, you've got to go out a few times before you make any big decisions.
The only thing that really matters is that there be an action of goodness, love and intelligence in living. Is goodness individual or collective, is love personal or impersonal, is intelligence yours, mine or somebody else? If it is yours or mine then it is not intelligence, or love, or goodness. If goodness is an affair of the individual or of the collective, according to one's particular preference or decision, then it is no longer goodness.
I believe that decisions about the timing and manner of death belong to the individual as a human right. I believe it is wrong to withhold medical methods of terminating life painlessly and swiftly when an individual has a rational and clear-minded sustained wish to end his or her life.
I'm newly widowed, so I've gone from having a life partner, and having another brain to make decisions with, to doing it all on my own and questioning what I'm doing. I have to be a calmer person, because my anger can look pretty terrifying to a young person.