Quotes from Lawrence Freedman

Having a strategy suggests an ability to look up from the short term and the trivial to view the long term and the essential, to address causes rather than symptoms, to see woods rather than trees.

Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth. —Mike Tyson

Indeed, Clausewitz was wary of the general who tried to be too smart. He preferred those who kept their imaginations in check and a firm grip on the harsh realities of battle.

Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are… The common people are always impressed by appearances and results.

Strategy is revolution. Everything else is tactics.

So the realm of strategy is one of bargaining and persuasion as well as threats and pressure, psychological as well as physical effects, and words as well as deeds. This is why strategy is the central political art. It is about getting more out of a situation than the starting balance of power would suggest. It is the art of creating power.

A strategist should think in terms of paralyzing, not of killing. —Basil Liddell Hart

The ability to persuade not only one's people but also allies and enemies was a vital attribute of the successful strategist. In this way, strategy required a combination of words and deeds, and the ability to manipulate them both.

Napoleon embodied a new way of fighting wars: a combination of individual genius and mass organization, and objectives far more ambitious than those of his predecessors.

The point at which God asserted his greatness to his chosen people was when he arranged the escape of the Jews from Egypt, where they were kept as slaves. One reading of the story of Exodus is that it was not so much about freeing the Israelites from slavery as about asserting God's greatness by establishing a people beholden to him and ensuring that they—and others—were in awe of his power. Under this interpretation, the Exodus story becomes a gigantic manipulation.

strategy formation walks on two feet, one deliberate, the other emergent.

we are all inevitably someone's adversary.

Radical groups with distant goals could find comfort in an isolated purity, while those who tasted success saw the value of accommodating the views of others.

A sudden powerful transition to the offensive—the flashing sword of vengeance—is the greatest moment for the defense.

It is as well to avoid illusions of control, but in the end all we can do is act as if we can influence events. To do otherwise is to succumb to fatalism.

There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one. —Hilary Mantel

man becomes a little cog in the machine, and, aware of this, his one preoccupation is to become a bigger cog. —Max Weber,

God created strategy by allowing choice,

Sin jerarquías, y cuando todas las decisiones están sometidas a constantes revisiones y replanteamientos, la organización se convierte en una maquinaria lenta y pesada, y la puesta en marcha de las ideas adquiere la forma de una idea solo provisional.

Los expertos de todo el mundo se acaban de dar cuenta de algo que cualquier niño podría haberles dicho: que una historia es más fácil de escuchar y mucho más fácil de recordar que una seca retahíla de hechos y propuestas».

The most effective strategies do not depend solely on violence—though this can play an instrumental role, by demonstrating superiority as much as expressing aggression—but benefit instead from the ability to forge coalitions. Little in the rest of this book will suggest that this list should be expanded. The elements of strategic behavior have not changed, only the complexity of the situations in which they must be applied.

The brain consumes 20 percent of the body's energy, far more than any other organ, while making up only 2 percent of an adult's body weight.

El poder para hacer daño es poder para negociar. La capacidad para explotarlo se llama diplomacia, una diplomacia perversa, pero diplomacia».

Las estrategias, por tanto, no deberían entenderse como medios para conseguir el control sobre determinadas situaciones, sino como modos de afrontar situaciones en las que nadie tiene un control total.