Quotes About Strategy

I have never believed you go to war in Iraq, you go to war in Afghanistan, and believe that you can deal with those battlefields, those countries, in microcosms, or narrow channels.

The allies we gain by victory will turn against us upon the bare whisper of our defeat.

To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilisation.

Friction is the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper.

War is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others.

A time-tested political tactic guaranteed to raise a president's popularity rating by at least 30 points. It is especially useful during election years and economic downturns.

If we read history with an open mind, we cannot fail to conclude that, among all the military virtues, the energetic conduct of war has always contributed most to glory and success.

When I went to war, I did not go making geopolitical calculations. I went to war with a lust.

I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind.

Politics is the womb in which war develops - where its outlines already exist in their hidden rudimentary form, like the characteristics of living creatures in their embryos.

In hard times of severe crisis if you want to create new jobs, I recommend you to start killing some people. It's the old "topos" of war in time of peace.

Make time for planning: Wars are won in the general's tent.

The important thing in war is that there is an element of rage, but you must remain very distant from it.

In war, character and opinion make more than half of the reality.

Most wars are not won in a single battle.

Wars are fought on objectives, not on timetable, and that's why I've been so insistent upon not allowing ourselves to have policy driven by time table, but by objective.

There's never any guarantee at war.

We were so shocked by how fast that war went that President Bush did not have a plan, a peace plan.

No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince ever says, 'This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.

The bodies of men, munition, and money may justly be called the sinews of war.

Republicans have been losing the war of words for years now. Now they are just caving because they don't even want to try. I don't agree with that approach.

Standards wars involve lots of variables, and understanding them often seems more an art than a science. They generally involve just two big players, and end in a winner-take-all situation.

President Bush said the other day the war is not about timetables. It's about winning. Hey, it worked in Florida.

In short, Roberto privately concluded, if you would avoid wars, never make treaties of peace.