Quotes About Strategy

A visionary pastor is a successful pastor.

The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.

If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten.

On every front, the CIA was turning its guerrillas into a far smarter and more lethal fighting force.

The difference in golf and government is that in golf you can't improve your lie.

Define your business goals clearly so that others can see them as you do.

A war regarded as inevitable or even probable, and therefore much prepared for, has a very good chance of eventually being fought.

We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

You have no idea how much it contributes to the general politeness and pleasantness of diplomacy when you have a little quiet armed force in the background

No matter how big and tough a problem may be, get rid of confusion by taking one little step towards solution. Do something. Then try again. At the worst, so long as you don't do it the same way twice, you will eventually use up all the wrong ways of doing it and thus the next try will be the right one.

In war the moral is to the material as three to one. Napoleon

There's more to boxing than hitting. There's not getting hit, for instance.

Let the other guy have whatever he wants before the fight. Once the bell rings he's gonna be disappointed anyway.

In Geo-Politics, a nation has no permanent allies or permanent enemies, only permanent interests.

Strategy is something that emerges from reality, while tactics might be chosen.

Building a naval power takes generations, not so much to develop the necessary technology as to pass along the accumulated experience that creates good admirals.

Presidents and other politicians manage the appearance of things, largely by manipulating the air and hope.

In some sense, the military is the most modern part of a developing country.

And from this story I learned about the geopolitics of taking out one's salami.

Great powers can tend to be casual because the situation is not existential. This increases the cost of doing what is necessary.

If the cost of naming the enemy is diplomatically or politically unacceptable, then the war is not likely to go well.

The founders made the president commander in chief for a reason: they had read Machiavelli carefully and they knew that, as he wrote, "there is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.

the most efficient way to use military power is to disrupt emerging powers before they can become even marginally threatening.

Freedom of action based on commander's intent means that the expectation is success, not a particular way of achieving success.