Quotes About Strategy

Big changes don't happen at the battlefield; they are made in closed rooms where very powerful people decide in which direction things should go.

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.

The reader will pardon a digression in which so invaluable a secret is communicated, since every gamester will agree how necessary it is to know exactly the play of another, in order to countermine him.

men, who in all other instances want common sense, are very Machiavels in the art of loving.

Contrary to a popular impression, profits are achieved not by raising prices, but by introducing economies and efficiencies that cut costs of production.

The typical political ploy was to load up benefits in the present and push costs into the future. Yet that future always arrived;

We can clarify our thinking if we put our chief emphasis where it belongs—on policies that will maximize production.

Much of the success of our thinking will depend upon just how we divide our big problems into subsidiary problems, and just what our subsidiary or subordinate problems are.

I can't make out what you're up to . . . You strike me as having mysterious purposes — vast designs.

Advertising scientifically worked presented itself thus as the great new force. It really does the thing, you know.

A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion . . . as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.

The "winners" seem to be people who not only are competent, but also have the ability to "negotiate" their way to get what they want.

His response to any question is a counter-question.

It's analyzing information, time, and power to affect behavior … the meeting of needs (yours and others') to make things happen the way you want them to.

Note that the salesman never responds directly to any question that might give you information.

The intelligent altruists, though less altruistic than unintelligent altruists, will be fitter than both unintelligent altruists and selfish individuals.

I advise my graduate students to pick a research problem that is important (so that it will matter if it is solved), but one for which they have a secret weapon that gives some prospect of success. Why a secret weapon? Because if the problem is important, other researchers as intelligent as my students will be trying to solve it; my students are likely to come in first only by having access to some knowledge or research methods the others do not have.

although the future is not predictable in any detail, it is manageable as an aggregate phenomenon.

Many men have a passion for food or drink or sex or making money. For Lyndon [Johnson] it was politics. It was his natural element, what literally kept him alive.

They may buy victory more discreetly in this day and age, but then the ante is a hell of a lot higher.

Companies figured out that the easiest way to make money was to reissue records that the accounting department had paid for years ago and already made a profit.

I couldn't beat Michael Phelps. A couple of years ago, I was racing against him and it just kinda dawned on me during the race that there was no chance I was gonna beat this guy. And so I said, if you can't beat him, find a race that he won't swim.

If you had no real training, if you hadn't spent years and years studying a martial art, how would you kill the bad guy?

I came from years and years in the direct marketing industry where everything is layered.