Quotes About Strategy

Be where your enemy is not.

The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.

Do not swallow bait offered by the enemy. Do not interfere with an army that is returning home.

War is the trade of kings.

To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.

War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.

It is merely a metaphor to call competition competitive war, or simply, war. The function of battle is destruction; of competition, construction.

The princes who have done great things are the ones who have taken little account of their promises.

This is impossible to predict. War may break out unexpectedly.

All our rulers have said that war is unthinkable, and then we think about it almost all the time. We've got to make it unthinkable.

The military weapon is but one of the means that serve the purposes of war: one out of the assortment which grand strategy can employ.

Nothing is of greater importance in time of war than in knowing how to make the best use of a fair opportunity when it is offered.

Diplomacy is a disguised war, in which states seek to gain by barter and intrigue, by the cleverness of arts, the objectives which they would have to gain more clumsily by means of war.

Think of the war against terrorism. In my view, Washington's approach can be compared to a doctor constantly banging away at a tumor instead of removing it surgically.

The basic principle that we must follow in directing the armies of the Republic is this: that they must feed themselves on war at the expense of the enemy territory.

Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God help me, I do love it so.

There is in guerrilla warfare no such thing as a decisive battle; there is nothing comparable to the fixed, passive defense that characterizes orthodox war.

war to win peace is at best a dangerously illogical method.

When the enemy is at ease, be able to weary him; when well fed, to starve him; when at rest, to make him move. Appear at places to which he must hasten; move swiftly where he does not expect you.

The greatest remedy that is used against a plan of the enemy is to do voluntarily what he plans that you do by force.

You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time.

Invincibility depends on one's self; the enemy's vulnerability on him.

Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy... use the conquered foe to augment one's own strength.

Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war.