„My style was to absorb all the data I could to make the best-informed decision possible, sometimes to the point of over-analysis.“

„My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available.“

—  Dwight D. Eisenhower American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961) 1890 - 1969

Notes for an announcement, written in advance of the Normandy invasion, in case of its failure, but never delivered (June 1944) http://doinghistoryproject.tripod.com/id17.html; reported in John Gunther, Eisenhower: The Man and the Symbol (1952), p. 41
1940s
Kontext: Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.

„Man has the hardest job of all, the job of making decisions on incomplete data.“

—  Henry Kuttner American author 1915 - 1958

Home There’s No Returning (p. 80)
Short fiction, No Boundaries (1955)

„I really want to clear my life so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community.“

—  Mark Zuckerberg American internet entrepreneur 1984

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: Why I wear the same T-shirt every day http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/11217273/Facebooks-Mark-Zuckerberg-Why-I-wear-the-same-T-shirt-every-day.html, The Telegraph, 7 November 2014

„Every decade or so, the business world invents another term for how it extracts managerial and decision-making value from computerized data. In the 1970s the favored term was “decision support systems,” accurately reflecting the importance of a decision-centered approach to data analysis. In the early 80s, “executive information systems” was the preferred nomenclature, which addressed the use of these systems by senior managers. Later in that decade, emphasis shifted to the more technical-sounding “online analytical processing,” or OLAP. The 90s saw the rise of “business intelligence” as a descriptor. In the middle of 2000’s first decade, “analytics” began to come into favor, at least for the more statistical and mathematical forms of data analysis.“

—  Thomas H. Davenport American academic 1954

Thomas H. Davenport. The New World of “Business Analytics”. International Institute for Analytics. March 2010

„My position is to listen to my constituents, learn from the best information available and ultimately make sound, rational decisions that are going to be beneficial to the people of the 8th Congressional District.“

—  Gabrielle Giffords American politician 1970

On her political positions during campaign — [Stephanie Innes, Giffords: Too soon to settle on a plan for health care, The Arizona Daily Star, August 11, 2009, A1, Arizona]

„[Information processing is] the gathering, interpreting and synthesis of information in the context of organisational decision making.“

—  David A. Nadler American organizational theorist 1948 - 2015

Zdroj: "Information Processing as an Integrating Concept in Organizational Design." 1978, p. 614

„Sometimes knowing what's right isn't a rational decision, or even what works on paper. Sometimes leaving is the best course of action after all.“

—  Jodi Picoult Author 1966

Zdroj: Vanishing Acts

„The risk of making a decision that's wrong is so enormous that sometimes it just crushes people so that they can't make any decision at all because they're afraid of making the wrong decision. And that's exactly what McClellan's problem was.“

—  James M. McPherson American historian 1936

1990s, An Exchange With a Civil War Historian (June 1995)

„When I look at large foundations making multimillion-dollar decisions while keeping their data and reasoning "confidential" – all I see is a gigantic pile of the most unbelievably mind-blowing arrogance of all time. I'm serious.“

—  Holden Karnofsky

In "Transparency, measurement, humility" https://blog.givewell.org/2007/12/27/transparency-measurement-humility/, December 2007; see "Some Thoughts on Public Discourse" http://effective-altruism.com/ea/17o/some_thoughts_on_public_discourse/ for an update to Karnofsky's thoughts

„Yet it is incumbent on those in high places to make wise decisions and it is reasonable and important that the public be correctly informed. It is consequently incumbent on all of us to state the facts as forthrightly as possible.“

—  Hyman George Rickover United States admiral 1900 - 1986

Paper Reactors, Real Reactors (1953)

„My job is a decision-making job, and as a result, I make a lot of decisions.“

—  George W. Bush 43rd President of the United States 1946

„Whenever I face a hard decision or a risky situation in life (personally or professionally), all my thinking, all my analysis, all my planning can be boiled down to four simple questions:
1. What is the best thing that can happen if I do this?
2. What is the worst thing that can happen if I do this?
3. What is the best thing that can happen if I don't do it?
4. What is the worst thing that can happen if I don't do it?“

—  Ben Carson 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon 1951

Zdroj: Take The Risk (2008), p. 21

„As a noun, design is the named (although sometimes unnamable) structure or behavior of a system whose presence resolves or contributes to the resolution of a force or forces on that system. A design thus represents one point in a potential decision space. A design may be singular (representing a leaf decision) or it may be collective (representing a set of other decisions).
As a verb, design is the activity of making such decisions. Given a large set of forces, a relatively malleable set of materials, and a large landscape upon which to play, the resulting decision space may be large and complex. As such, there is a science associated with design (empirical analysis can point us to optimal regions or exact points in this design space) as well as an art (within the degrees of freedom that range beyond an empirical decision; there are opportunities for elegance, beauty, simplicity, novelty, and cleverness).
All architecture is design but not all design is architecture. Architecture represents the significant design decisions that shape a system, where significant is measured by cost of change.“

—  Grady Booch American software engineer 1955

Grady Booch (2006) " On design https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/gradybooch/entry/on_design?lang=en" cited in: Frank Buschmann, ‎Kevlin Henney, ‎Douglas C. Schmidt (2007) Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture, On Patterns and Pattern Languages. p. 214

„There are in the final analysis, two kinds of decisions. One, decisions you make for yourself and two decisions other people make for you, whether it's one tyrant or 51% of your fellow citizens.“

—  Alan Charles Kors American academic 1943

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011), Q&A

„[That] is the essence of poker: making tricky decisions based on incomplete information.“

—  John Vorhaus

Introduction
Poker Night (2004)

„Sometimes success isn't about making the right decision, it's more about making some decision.“

—  Robin S. Sharma Canadian self help writer 1965

Zdroj: The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life

„Decisions are always made with insufficient information. If you really knew what was going on, the decision would make itself.“

—  Jack McDevitt American novelist, Short story writer 1935

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 39 (p. 370)

„The Decision Theory School : Another approach to management theory, undertaken by a growing and scholarly group, might be referred to as the decision theory school. This group concentrates on rational approach to decision-the selection from among possible alternatives of a course of action or of an idea. The approach of this school may be to deal with the decision itself, or to the persons or organizational group making the decision, or to an analysis of the decision process. Some limit themselves fairly much to the economic rationale of the decision, while others regard anything which happens in an enterprise the subject of their analysis, and still others expand decision theory to cover the psychological and sociological aspect and environment of decisions and decision-makers.“

—  Harold Koontz 1909 - 1984

Zdroj: "The Management Theory Jungle," 1961, p. 180

„I understand not everybody agrees with the decisions I've made, but that's not unique to Central or South America. Truth of the matter is, there's people who disagree with the decisions I've made all over the world. But that's what happens when you make decisions.“

—  George W. Bush 43rd President of the United States 1946

At the Mar del Plata Summit of the Americas, November 4, 2005. http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/11/04/bush.summit/index.html
2000s, 2005