[T]he course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others. Whatever action is required, whenever action is necessary, I will defend the freedom and security of the American people.
I wanted to come to Washington, D.C. and help be a transformative President. And I think history, when they look back, will say this is a fellow who knew how to make decisions, and made some tough ones, stood by them, wasn't driven by the latest opinion poll, but was driven by some core principles from which he would not deviate.
The administration took care of a source of instability in Iraq. Envision a world in which Saddam Hussein was rushing for a nuclear weapon to compete against Iran. My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the correct decision in my judgment. We didn't find the weapons we thought we would find or the weapons everybody thought he had. But he was a significant source of instability.
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.
From the beginning, I said that Israel, one, has a right to defend herself, but Israel ought to be cautious about how she defends herself. Israel's a democratically elected government. They make decisions on their own sovereignty. It's their decision-making that is what leads to the tactics they chose.
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.
We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if a decision itself were voluntary every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide - An infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide
I want the Iraqis to understand that we are with them and that they have to make tough decisions, and we'll help them make those tough decisions for this country, for this democracy to survive. And they've made some tough decisions.
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 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.
I want to make sure that as president of the United States that I'm not asserting in some way that my decisions overrule the decisions of prosecutors who are there to uphold the law.
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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.