Quotes About Strategy

Nothing leads more surely to disaster than that a military plan should be pursued with crippled steps and in a lukewarm spirit in the face of continual nagging within the executive circle.

The strategic aspect of General Joffre's policy was not less stultified than the administrative. The easterly and north-easterly attacks into which his four Armies of the Right and Centre were impetuously launched, were immediately stopped and hurled back with a slaughter so frightful that it has never yet been comprehended by the world. His

A war postponed may be a war prevented. The combinations of States vary as years pass. The Ententes or Alliances of one decade may have lost their savour in the next. Time and peace solve many problems, and men's thoughts move on to new spheres.

the war in the West resolved itself into two periods of supreme battle, divided from each other by a three-years' siege.

a letter of the great Duke of Marlborough, in which he said: "To remove a General in the midst of a campaign—that is the mortal stroke.

Having sex is like bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.

If you want to have a future, don't do anything with no future in it.

What you must do, said Monkey, is lure the monster from its hiding place, but be certain it is a fight you can survive.

battles are decided more by the morale of the troops than by their bodily strength." Syazarees

If an army is to win through to victory, it has to spend all its time helping itself or hurting its foe. Therefore, an army should never be idle.

I've trained you to be as honest as any man who ever lived, but if virtue serves to guide our actions with our friends and allies, every sort of trick can be used against our enemies. That's why you were taught never to hunt a lion or a bear without some special advantage. Didn't that kind of lesson teach you cunning and deceit?

It is always the cunning, not the naïve, who rise to power, and leaders must use artfulness to make any organization whatsoever work well. Yet they must never be guided by cynical and self-serving counsels. If they don't call upon their higher selves, they will descend further into petty egotism and tyrannical behavior. As

Again, if there is prospect of danger on the march, a prudent general can hardly show his wisdom better than by sending out advanced patrols in front of the ordinary exploring parties to reconnoitre every inch of ground

your game is to attack on whichever flank you can best conceal your advance, or, still better, on both flanks simultaneously;

he should have the craft to appear absent when close at hand, and within striking distance when a long way off;

But over and beyond all that can be written on the subject—inventiveness is a personal matter, beyond all formulas—the true general must be able to take in, deceive, decoy, delude his adversary at every turn, as the particular occasion demands. In fact, there is no instrument of war more cunning than chicanery;

Here, too, is a maxim to engrave upon the memory: in charging a superior force, never to leave a difficult tract of ground in the rear of your attack, since there is all the difference in the world between a stumble in flight and a stumble in pursuit.

Long-term, bad politics is bad for business.

Apart from trade, the main form of interaction between nations is war.

You don't start with today and aim toward your goal. You start with the goal, and aim back toward today. Do it like that, and you'll always find a way.

eased back to a walk, obeying the ultrarunner's creed: "If you can't see the top, walk." When you're running fifty miles, there's no dividend in bashing up the hills and then being winded on the way down; you only lose a few seconds if you walk, and then you can make them back up by flying downhill.

Anatoly Karpov, his by-the-book opponent, was too conservative to pressure Kasparov early in the game, so Kasparov put the pressure on himself with a Queen's Gambit—and won.

Ejemplo clásico:Steve Prefontaine.Pre aceleró demasiado rápido dos veces en la misma carrera en las olimpiadas de 1972;las dos veces lo alcanzaron. Llegado el último tramo, Pre no había guardado combustible y cayó hasta el cuarto puesto, lo que hizo que se quedase sin medalla. Esa derrota histórica grabó a fuego la lección: nadie pierde el puesto de perseguidor si no se ve obligado a ello. A menos que seas tonto o imprudente, o a menos que seas Gari Kasparov. En

Wars are won in the mind before they can be won on the field.