Quotes About Strategy

No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince ever says, 'This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.

Here's my win, born out of the bumps and bruises of sibling conflict: If you have two kids, assign one even, the other odd. Then whenever there's a question of who gets the "advantage," it's decided by what day it is. Who gets their pick of car seat? Odd kid, because today's the third. Who gets the last hug at drop-off? Even kid, because today's the sixteenth.

Too many kings can ruin an army

Come, weave us a scheme so I can pay them back! Stand beside me, Athena, fire me with daring, fierce as the day we ripped Troy's glittering crown of towers down. Stand by me - furious now as then, my bright-eyed one - and I would fight three hundred men, great goddess, with you to brace me, comrade-in-arms in battle!

Then when all the contingents were marshaled with their leaders the Trojans set out with ringing cries and clamor

Well, back in Troy, Odysseus and I always agreed in councils, with one mind. We gave the Argives all the best advice.

individuals will sacrifice themselves for the good of a larger whole. When groups struggle, the ones which boast the most effective organization, strategy, and weapons win. Individuals who contribute to their group's virtuosity will be part of the team which survives.

To be an enduring, great company, you have to build a mechanism for preventing or solving problems that will long outlast any one individual leader.

A Yale professor of military history, Micheal Howard, writing in the New York Times )January 28, 1991) quoted the military strategist Clausewitz approvingly: The fact that a bloody slaughter is a horrifying act must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity.

It was necessary, we felt, to thoroughly terrify our opponents, so that even in hollow victory, they would learn to fear every sunrise ...

Sending Muskie against Nixon would have been like sending a three-toed sloth out to seize turf from a wolverine.

ignored the Wallace rallies that, night after night, packed halls in every corner of the state. That was all Wallace did—except for a few TV spots—and every one of his rallies attracted more people than the halls could hold.

Secondly, instead of competing with Muskie and Humphrey, I was then competing with Nixon, the author of the Southern strategy and the guy who hammered hard against those who were dissenters on the war and hammered on amnesty and busing and those things, so that it was a different type of competition than I had with Muskie and Humphrey in Wisconsin.

It is bad business to go into War without a target.

And don't get hurt,' [Dexter] added. 'There's no one to help you up there. And don't go stirring up a lot of trouble for us. This case isn't ripe yet. Until it is, our policy with Mr Big is 'live and let live'.' Bond looked quizzically at Captain Dexter In my job,' he said, 'when I come up against a man like this one, I have another motto. It's 'live and let die'.

Never send a man where you can send a bullet.

The game, whatever it was, had to be played out. If the change of rooms had been the opening gambit, so much the better. The game had to begin somewhere.

Clausewitz's first principle was to have a secure base. From there one proceeds to freedom of action.

The first law for a secret agent is to get his geography right, his means of access and exit, and assure his communications with the outside world.

at gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.

He knew from long experience that a letter sent in fury merely put a weapon into the hands of your enemy

He knew from long experience that a letter sent in fury merely put a weapon into the hands of your enemy. Poison, in preserved form, to be used against you long into the future.

Get in first and shape the terms.

King wrote a colleague during the conference. "I have found it necessary to find time to point out to some 'amateur strategists' in high places that unity of command is not a panacea for all military difficulties—and I shall continue to do so.