Quotes About Strategy

Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don't run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.

Fighting wars is not so much about killing people as it is about finding things out. The more you know, the more likely you are to win a battle.

Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield, but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And that is what the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. do: prevent the wars that we can avoid so that we fight only the ones we must.

Are wars anything but the means whereby a nation is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed?

America has fought five wars since 1945 and has gained its objectives in only one of them, the Gulf War.

War is no picnic. Wars should be prevented, and if you can't prevent them, you have to put them off.

Let's remember, the CIA's job is to go out and create wars.

I think that war is diplomacy by other means, for sure, and there have been wars that have been fought for righteous reasons. There are wars that have had to be fought, and there will probably continue to be.

Politicians do not enter into wars lightly. It is usually the military themselves who are keener to become involved.

Those who think that through concessions they will gain respect and peace are wrong. It's the other way around; it will lead to more wars.

The wars of the future will be fought by computer technicians and by lawyers and high-altitude specialists, and that may mean war will be increasingly abstract, hard to think about and hard to control.

'm a general, I do something. I go out and fight wars and win them.

I don't go around trying to stir up foreign wars.

As an infantry officer who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, I have led men in combat and trained them on tactics and strategy. The mission of the infantry is to 'close with, and destroy, the enemy.' Our job, in a direct way, is to fight and win wars.

Wars without military objectives have a tendency to go on forever.

Emotions may win arguments, but they don't win wars.

The most important thing you need to know about the Pentagon is that it is not in charge of today's wars but rather tomorrow's wars.

You need to think, when you get involved in wars, how you're going to get out of them.

Israel does not start wars.

We should not fight wars without a clearly defined end state... when you go to war, it can't be a half-step.

Only four secretaries of defense served longer than Robert M. Gates. Many others were as dedicated; many sacrificed a great deal. Alone among them all, however, Mr. Gates had the task of turning around two wars that the U.S. was losing.

I think we would find, if you study the conduct of guerilla-type wars, that the Obama Administration has hit more targets on a broader scale than the Nixon Administration ever did.

Israel is the only country in the world that is ready to make compromises - even though it did not lose any wars.

In the years leading up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, thinking about defense was driven by ideas that regarded successful military operations as ends in themselves rather than just one instrument of power that must be coordinated with others to achieve - and sustain - political goals.