Deliberation Quotes

1. "So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, there's never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on."
Author: A. B. Yehoshua

2. "It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision."
Author: Barbara Jordan

3. "Many [Tudor-era religious radicals] believed then, exactly as Christian fundamentalists do today, that they lived in the 'last days' before Armageddon and, again just as now, saw signs all around in the world that they took as certain proof that the Apocalypse was imminent. Again like fundamentalists today, they looked on the prospect of the violent destruction of mankind without turning a hair. The remarkable similarity between the first Tudor Puritans and the fanatics among today's Christian fundamentalists extends to their selective reading of the Bible, their emphasis on the Book of Revelation, their certainty of their rightness, even to their phraseology. Where the Book of Revelation is concerned, I share the view of Guy, that the early church fathers released something very dangerous on the world when, after much deliberation, they decided to include it in the Christian canon."[From the author's concluding Historical Note]"
Author: C.J. Sansom

4. "Deliberation is the work of many men. Action, of one alone."
Author: Charles De Gaulle

5. "When he began to move, it wasn't with the urgency she expected given their rushed beginnings. It was with a slow deliberation that would destroy her."
Author: Cherrie Lynn

6. "[S]ince you are angry at me without reason, you attack me harshly with, "Oh outrageous presumption! Oh excessively foolish pride! Oh opinion uttered too quickly and thoughtlessly by the mouth of a woman! A woman who condemns a man of high understanding and dedicated study, a man who, by great labour and mature deliberation, has made the very noble book of the Rose, which surpasses all others that were ever written in French. When you have read this book a hundred times, provided you have understood the greater part of it, you will discover that you could never have put your time and intellect to better use!" My answer: Oh man deceived by willful opinion! I could assuredly answer but I prefer not to do it with insult, although, groundlessly, you yourself slander me with ugly accusations. Oh darkened understanding! Oh perverted knowledge ... A simple little housewife sustained by the doctrine of Holy Church could criticise your error!"
Author: Christine De Pizan

7. "That we are rational agents—that a great many of our actions are not merely the results of serial physiological urges but are instead dictated by coherent conceptual connections and private deliberations—is one of those primordial data I mentioned above that cannot be reduced to some set of purely mechanical functions without producing nonsense. That a number of cognitive scientists should be exerting themselves to tear down the Cartesian partition between body and soul, hoping to demonstrate that there is no Wonderful Wizard on the other side pulling the levers, is poignant proof that our mechanistic paradigms trap much of our thinking about mind and body within an absurd dilemma: we must believe either in a ghost mysteriously animating a machine or in a machine miraculously generating a ghost. Premodern thought allowed for a far less restricted range of conceptual possibilities."
Author: David Bentley Hart

8. "When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities."
Author: David Hume

9. "Industrial capitalism brought representative democracy, but with a weak public mandate and inert citizenry. The digital age offers a new democracy based on public deliberation and active citizenship."
Author: Don Tapscott

10. ". . . a nation is not an idea only of local extent, and individual momentary aggregation; but it is an idea of continuity, which extends in time as well as in numbers and in space. And this is a choice not only of one day, or one set of people, not a tumultuary and giddy choice; it is a deliberate election of ages and of generations; it is a constitution made by what is ten thousand times better than choice, it is made by the peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil, and social habitudes of the people, which disclose themselves only in a long space of time. It is a vestment, which accommodates itself to the body. Nor is prescription of government formed upon blind, unmeaning prejudices—for man is a most unwise and a most wise being. The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right."
Author: Edmund Burke

11. "These people came into the world and left it bound to their soil, proliferating on their own dung-hills with slow deliberation like the uncomplicated soul of trees which scatter their seed about their feet, with little conception of any larger world beyond the dun rocks among which they vegetated."
Author: Émile Zola

12. "It was the power of Business, not the deliberations of statesman, that shaped the destinies of nations. The Foreign Ministers of the great powers might make the actual declarations of their Governments' policies; but it was the Big Business men, the bankers and their dependents, the arms manufacturers, the oil companies, the big industrialists, who determined what those policies should be."
Author: Eric Ambler

13. "Don't be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don't be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again."
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

14. "Fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don't be afraid—the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again. What bank? How can I tell? I only believe that you have long life before you. I know that you take all my words now for a set speech prepared beforehand, but maybe you will remember them after. They may be of use some time."
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

15. "I regard you as one of those men who would stand and smile at their torturer while he cuts their entrails out, if only they have found faith or God. Find it and you will live. You have long needed a change of air. Suffering, too, is a good thing. Suffer! Maybe Nikolay is right in wanting to suffer. I know you don't believe in it—but don't be over-wise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don't be afraid—the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again. What bank? How can I tell? I only believe that you have long life before you."
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

16. "All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests."
Author: George Washington

17. "They say that at Thomas More's trial, Master Secretary here followed the jury to their deliberations, and when they were seated he closed the door behind him and he laid down the law. "Let me put you out of doubt," he said to the jurymen. "Your task is to find Sir Thomas guilty, and you will have no dinner till you have done it." Then out he went and shut the door again and stood outside it with a hatchet in his hand, in case they broke out in search of a boiled pudding; and being Londoners, they care about their bellies above all things, and as soon as they felt them rumbling they cried, "Guilty! He is as guilty as guilty can be!"
Author: Hilary Mantel

18. "The novice in the military art flew from point to point, retarding his own preparations by the excess of his violent and somewhat distempered zeal; while the more practiced veteran made his arrangements with a deliberation that scorned every appearance of haste"
Author: James Fenimore Cooper

19. "My worst fears from jury selection manifested themselves in the verdict. This jury needed someone to tell them exactly how Caylee died. Piecing it together from circumstantial evidence was not good enough for them. They wanted the answers on a silver platter, but we didn't have the evidence to serve it that way. It's not just the verdict that tells me this, but also the manner in which it was reached. The fact that they didn't request any materials to review. The fact that they didn't have any questions for the judge. If the statements that the foreman of the jury made to the media are true, ten of these twelve jurors felt that ninety minutes of deliberation was sufficient to fully weigh, consider, and reject four weeks' worth of testimony that we on the prosecution used to establish that this was first-degree murder. The rest of the thirteen hours of deliberation had been spent trying to convince the two holdout jurors of the decision."
Author: Jeff Ashton

20. "The cerebral processing of that visceral input as a signal of death was accurate. Without the kinds of therapy that had been developed over the decades, this cancer would have been fatal. Hope, then, is constructed not just from rational deliberation, from the conscious weighing of information; it arises as an amalgam of thought and feeling, the feelings created in part by neural input from the organs and tissues."
Author: Jerome Groopman

21. "After careful deliberation, I voted today to reauthorize the Patriot Act."
Author: Jim Gerlach

22. "How do we get there? How did you get here, by the way?' [Will asked].He heard Halt's deep sigh and knew he'd done it again.'Do you ever,' the older Ranger said with great deliberation, 'manage to ask just one question at a time? Or does it always have to be multiple choice with you?'Will looked at him in surprise. 'Do I do that?' he asked. 'Are you sure?'Halt said nothing. He raised his hands in a 'See what I mean?' gesture...'Halt,' [Selethen said], 'I could be wrong, but I think you were just guilty of the same fault. I'm sure I heard you ask two questions just then.''Thank you for pointing that out, Lord Selethen,' Halt said with icy formality."
Author: John Flanagan

23. "Stain not the glory of your worthy ancestors, but like them resolve never to part with your birthright; be wise in your deliberations, and determined in your exertions for the preservation of your liberties. Fllow not the dictates of passion, but enlist yourselves under the sacred banner of reason; use every method in your power to secure your rights."
Author: Joseph Warren

24. "Love arrives without practical deliberations in its suitcase."
Author: Joshua Emmet

25. "... that gender is a choice, or that gender is a role, or that gender is a construction that one puts on, as one puts on clothes in the morning, that there is a 'one' who is prior to this gender, a one who goes to the wardrobe of gender and decides with deliberation which gender it will be today."
Author: Judith Butler

26. "The formalities necessary to obtain a work were quite complicated; the borrower's form had to contain the book's title, format, publication date, edition number, and the author's name- in other words, unless one was already informed, one could not become so. At the bottom, spaces were left to indicate the borrower's age, address, profession, and purpose of research. Michel obeyed these regulations and handed his properly filled-out form to the librarian sleeping at his desk; following his example, the pages were snoring loudly on chairs set around the wall; their functions had become a sinecure as complete as those of the ushers at the Comedie-Francaise. The librarian, waking with a start, stared at the bold young man; he read the form and appeared to be stupefied at the request; after much deliberation, to Michel's alarm, he sent the latter to a subordinate official working near his own window, but at a separate little desk..."
Author: Jules Verne

27. "The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness."
Author: Julia Ward Howe

28. "Inertia is so easy—don't fix what's not broken. Leave well enough alone. So we end up accepting what is broken, mistaking complaining for action, procrastinating for deliberation."
Author: Justina Chen

29. "It's not reasonable to love people who are only going to die," she said.Nash thought about that for a moment, stroking Small's neck with great deliberation, as if the fate of the Dells depended on that smooth, careful movement."I have two responses to that," He said at last. "First, everyone is going to die. Second, love is stupid. It has nothing to do with reason. You love whomever you love. Against all reason I loved my father." He looked at her keenly. "Did you love yours?""Yes," she whispered.He stroked Small's nose. "I love you," he said, "even knowing you'll never have me. And I love my brother, more than I ever realized before you came along. You can't help whom you love, Lady. Nor can you know what it's liable to cause you to do."
Author: Kristin Cashore

30. "Order what you feel like eating," says your impatient dinner companion. But the problem is that you don't KNOW what you feel like eating. What you feel like eating is precisely what you are trying to figure out.Order what you feel like eating" is just a piece of advice about the criteria you should be using to guide your deliberations. It is not a solution to your menu problem - just as "Do the right thing" and "Tell the truth" are only suggestions about criteria, not answers to actual dilemmas. The actual dilemma is what, in the particular case staring you in the face, the right thing to do or the honest thing to say really is. And making those kinds of decisions - about what is right or what is truthful - IS like deciding what to order in a restaurant, in the sense that getting a handle on tastiness is no harder or easier (even though it is generally less important) than getting a handle on justice or truth."
Author: Louis Menand

31. "What do we tell our children? Haste makes waste. Look before you leap. Stop and think. Don't judge a book by its cover. We believe that we are always better off gathering as much information as possible and spending as much time as possible in deliberation."
Author: Malcolm Gladwell

32. "Like everybody who is not in love, he thought one chose the person to be loved after endless deliberations and on the basis of particular qualities or advantages."
Author: Marcel Proust

33. "He's one of those smart, drifty young people who, after certain deliberations, decides he wants to do Something in the Arts but won't, possibly can't, think in terms of an actual job; who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time."
Author: Michael Cunningham

34. "We Americans are world leaders and we must lead by example - particularly in times that require careful deliberation before any precipitous action - lest we fail to walk in the shoes of those we might injure."
Author: Peter Yarrow

35. "From this outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living. Did all dying people feel this way, as if they had never lived? Did life seem that short, indeed, over and done before you took a breath? Did it seem this abrupt and impossible to everyone, or only to himself, here, now, with a few hours left to him for thought and deliberation?"
Author: Ray Bradbury

36. "Tocqueville saw that the life of constant action and decision which was entailed by the democratic and businesslike character of American life put a premium upon rough and ready habits of mind, quick decision, and the prompt seizure of opportunities - and that all this activity was not propitious for deliberation, elaboration, or precision in thought."
Author: Richard Hofstadter

37. "Before an experiment can be performed, it must be planned—the question to nature must be formulated before being posed. Before the result of a measurement can be used, it must be interpreted—nature's answer must be understood properly. These two tasks are those of the theorist, who finds himself always more and more dependent on the tools of abstract mathematics. Of course, this does not mean that the experimenter does not also engage in theoretical deliberations. The foremost classical example of a major achievement produced by such a division of labor is the creation of spectrum analysis by the joint efforts of Robert Bunsen, the experimenter, and Gustav Kirchhoff, the theorist. Since then, spectrum analysis has been continually developing and bearing ever richer fruit."
Author: Robert Bunsen

38. "If we think of politics as an industry, we might delight in its new "labour-saving efficiency", but if we think of politics as democratic deliberation, to leave people out is to miss the whole point of the exercise."
Author: Robert D. Putnam

39. "Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent."
Author: Samuel Johnson

40. "Impulsiveness can be charming but deliberation can have an appeal, as well."
Author: Sarah Dessen

41. "Derived from the Greek word anarchos, "without authority," anarchism denies law and considers property to be tyranny. Anarchists believe that human corruption results when differences are enforced through the maintenance of property and authority. Anarchists do not oppose or deny governance as long as it exists without coercion and the threat of violence. They oppose and deny the authority of the centralized state and propose governance through collaboration, deliberation, consensus, and common coordination. Justice can emerge from a sense of common purpose and practices of mutual aid, not the monopoly on violence that the state demands. While anarchism is commonly associated with bloody violence and rage, anarchists believe deeply in an ideology of love."
Author: Siva Vaidhyanathan

42. "I get to the back of the house, I damn near tear the door off the hinges. It isn't an act of fury, fury isn't part of it anymore. It's more deliberate than fury yet more instinctive than deliberation."
Author: Steve Erickson

43. "The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one's deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field."
Author: Sun Tzu

44. "Such bureaucrats can neither be hurried in their deliberations nor made to see common sense. Indeed, the very absurdity or pedantry of these deliberations is for them the guarantee of their own fair-mindedness, impartiality, and disinterest. To treat all people with equal contempt and indifference is the bureaucrat's idea of equity."
Author: Theodore Dalrymple

45. "Then, too, the senate has a rule that no point is discussed on the same day it is brought up, but rather it is put off till the next meeting; they do this so that someone who blurts out the first thing that occurs to him will not proceed to think up arguments to defend his position instead of looking for what is of use to the commonwealth, being willing to damage the public welfare rather than his own reputation, ashamed, as it were, in a perverse and wrong-headed way, to admit that his first view was short-sighted. From the start such a person should have taken care to speak with deliberation rather than haste."
Author: Thomas More

46. "Cesar is not a philosophical man. His life has been one long flight from reflection. At least he is clever enough not to expose the poverty of his general ideas; he never permits the conversation to move toward philosophical principles. Men of his type so dread all deliberation that they glory in the practice of the instantaneous decision. They think they are saving themselves from irresolution; in reality they are sparing themselves the contemplation of all the consequences of their acts. Moreover, in this way they can rejoice in the illusion of never having made a mistake; for act follows so swiftly on act that it is impossible to reconstruct the past and say that an alternative decision would have been better. They can pretend that every act was forced on them under emergency and that every decision was mothered by necessity"
Author: Thornton Wilder

47. "Destiny had decreed that the Gauls were still to feel the true meaning of Roman valor, for when the raiders started on their mission Rome's lucky star led them to Ardea, where Camillus was living in exile, more grieved by the misfortunes of his country than by his own. Growing, as he felt, old and useless, filled with resentment against gods and men, he was asking in the bitterness of his heart where now were the men who had stormed Veii and Falerii - the men whose courage in every fight had been greater even than their success, when suddenly he heard the news that a Gallic army was near. The men of Ardea, he knew, were in anxious consultation, and it had not been his custom to assist at their deliberations; but now, like a man inspired, he burst into the Council chamber."
Author: Titus Livy

48. "The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught."
Author: Walt Whitman

49. "Say a word, say a thousand to me on the telephone and I shall choose the wrong one to cling to as though you had said it after long deliberation when only I provoked it from you, I will cling to it from among a thousand, to be provoked and hurl it back with something I mean no more than you meant that, something for you to cling to and retreat clinging to."
Author: William Gaddis

50. "Her nose was perfect; her lips exquisite. Like a master placing a go stone on the board after long deliberation, he placed the details of her beauty one by one in the misty dark and drew back to savour them."
Author: Yukio Mishima

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