Quotes About Strategy

The formation of proper alliances was in some ways a more important art than that of warfare itself, and the statesmen adept at this art were more powerful than military leaders.

But if, to avoid the taint of power, you attempt to treat everyone equally and fairly, you will confront the problem that some people do certain things better than others. Treating everyone equally means ignoring their differences, elevating the less skillful and suppressing those who excel. Again, many of those who behave this way are actually deploying another power strategy, redistributing people's rewards in a way that they determine.

Daily Law: The person with the more global perspective wins. Expand your gaze.

For Chinese courtiers, the problem of how to give the emperor advice was an important issue. Over the years, thousands of them had died trying to warn or counsel their master. To be made safely, their criticisms had to be indirect—yet if they were too indirect they would not be heeded. The chronicles were their solution: Identify no one person as the source of criticism, make the advice as impersonal as possible, but let the emperor know the gravity of the situation.

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires. THE PRINCE, Niccolò Machiavelli, 1469-1527 LAW 1 NEVER OUTSHINE THE MASTER JUDGMENT Always make those above you feel comfortably superior.

In truth, the use of honesty is indeed a power strategy, intended to convince people of one's noble, good-hearted, selfless character. It is a form of persuasion, even a subtle form of coercion.

Genuinely innocent people may still be playing for power, and are often horribly effective at the game, since they are not hindered by reflection. Once again, those who make a show or display of innocence are the least innocent of all.

Reserva tu prudencia para las horas de la preparación; pero una vez empezado el combate, vacía tu mente de dudas. Ignora a quienes se acobardan ante cualquier revés y piden el repliegue.

Power depended on being in the room when the decisions were taken.

I am not a pacifist. The main lesson I have learned in my dealings with Hitler is that one simply can't play poker with a gangster if one has no cards in one's hand.

Sometimes, he said, summing up the discussion with an aphorism I have never forgotten, if you find yourself stuck in politics, the thing to do is start a fight--start a fight, even if you do not know how you are going to win it, because it is only when a fight is on, and everything is in motion, that you can hope to see your way through.

In the end, the only safe place to put a Trojan horse is outside your walls.

if you find yourself stuck in politics, the thing to do is start a fight—start a fight, even if you do not know how you are going to win it, because it is only when a fight is on, and everything is in motion, that you can hope to see your way through.

But it is one of the tricks of the successful politician to be able to hold many things in mind at once and to switch between them as the need arises;

Politics is a country idiot capable of concentrating on only one thing at a time.

The only thing you can be sure of, Herr March, is that - whoever wins - still standing when the smoke of battle clears will be the banks of the cantons of Switzerland.

He had learned well from Cicero the tricks of political campaigning: keep your speeches short, remember names, tell jokes, put on a show; above all, render an issue, however complex, into a story anyone can grasp.

The trouble with Lucious, he said, putting his feet up on the desk after this cousin has gone, is that he thinks politics is a fight for justice. Politics is a profession.

The trouble with Lucius," he said, putting his feet up on the desk after his cousin had gone, "is that he thinks politics is a fight for justice. Politics is a profession.

But there is as much skill in knowing how to handle a meeting of ten as there is in manipulating a gathering of hundreds.

Push out a bayonet. If it strikes fat, push deeper. If it strikes iron, pull back for another day.

Cuáles son las únicas armas que poseo, Tiro? -me preguntó, y él mismo respondió-: Estas -dijo, señalando sus libros-. Las palabras. César y Pompeyo tienen soldados; Craso, dinero; Clodio, los matones de la calle. Mis legiones son mis palabras. Gracias a ellas he llegado donde estoy, y gracias a ellas sobreviviré.

Sometimes,' he said, summing up the discussion with an aphorism I have never forgotten, 'if you find yourself stuck in politics, the thing to do is start a fight – start a fight, even if you do not know how you are going to win it, because it is only when a fight is on, and everything is in motion, that you can hope to see your way through.

when faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.