Quotes About Strategy

There's an old saying that applies to me: you can't lose a game if you don't play the game. (Act 1, scene 4)

Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner

All is fair in love and war

I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall; I'll slay more gazers than the basalisks; I'll play the orator as well as Nestor, Decieve more slily that Ulysses could, And like a Sinon, take another Troy. I can add colors to the chameleon, Change shapes with Proteus for advantages And set the murderous Machiavel to school. Can I do this, and cannot get a crown? Tut! were it further off, I'll pluck it down.

This is a way to kill a wife with kindness, And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humour. He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Now let him speak. 'Tis charity to show.

I have learn'd that fearful commenting Is leaden servitor to dull delay; Delay leads impotent and snail-pac'd beggary. Then fiery expedition be my wing, Jove's Mercury, and herald for a king! Go, muster men. My counsel is my shield. We must be brief when traitors brave the field.

Then I resolved that I would go back out there and somehow cope with the situation, despite the fact that I lacked a strategy and was frightened to the pit of my being.

Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA). Your

The purpose of negotiation is to explore whether you can satisfy your interests better through an agreement than you could by pursuing your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA). Your

Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way. —Daniele Vare, Italian diplomat

Rarely is it advisable to meet prejudices and passions head on. Instead, it is best to appear to conform to them in order to gain time to combat them. One must know how to sail with a contrary wind and to tack until one meets a wind in the right direction. —Fortune de Felice, 1778

Take the eighteenth-century general who had fallen into disfavor with the great Prussian warrior king, Frederick the Great. Coming upon the king, the general saluted him with the greatest respect, but Frederick turned his back. "I am happy to see that Your Majesty is no longer angry with me," murmured the general. "How so?" demanded Frederick. "Because Your Majesty has never in his life turned his back on an enemy," replied the general.

3A trap": we attack, we accommodate (in other words, give in), or we avoid altogether

Effective negotiation requires a persistent focus on what is most important.

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.

You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.

Now that we have run out of money we have to think.

One clear-cut result is worth a dozen wise precautions.

For get this quite clear, every time we have to decide between Europe and the open sea, it is always the open sea we shall choose. Every time I have to decide between you [Charles de Gaulle] and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt.

We often hear military experts inculcate the doctrine of giving priority to the decisive theatre. There is a lot in this. But in war this principle, like all others, is governed by facts and circumstances; otherwise strategy would be too easy. It would become a drill-book and not an art; it would depend upon rules and not on an instructed and fortunate judgment of the proportions of an ever-changing scene.

Well, in war, you can only be killed once. But in politics, many times.

Gli italiani perdono le partite di calcio come se fossero guerre e perdono le guerre come se fossero partite di calcio.