Quotes About Strategy

An army abroad is of little use unless there are prudent counsels at home. [Lat., Parvi enim sunt foris arma, nisi est consilium domi.]

The supreme excellence is not to win a hundred victories in a hundred battles. The supreme excellence is to subdue the armies of your enemies without having to fight them.

To conquer the enemy without resorting to war is the most desirable. The highest form of generalship is to conquer the enemy by strategy.

If you wage war, do it energetically and with severity. This is the only way to make it shorter and consequently less inhuman.

Generally in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this.

Our enemy sees us clearly. They will not start a war. They're worried about one thing: If democracy develops here, if we succeed, we will win

It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two.

I know that this operation will be sort of helter-skelter. But the First Marine Division is going to win the war by landing at Inchon.

An army which cannot be regularly recruited is a doomed army.

Bestow rewards without regard to rule, issue orders without regard to previous arrangements; and you will be able to handle a whole army as though you had to do with but a single man.

Rapidity is the essence of war.

The higher level of grand strategy [is] that of conducting war with a far-sighted regard to the state of the peace that will follow.

He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them.

When the advice of Moscow ran counter to [Ho Chi Minh's] own ideas - as in the 1930s - he kept his head down and waited until the situation changed in his favor with the beginning of the Pacific War.

Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance.

To make war all you need is intelligence. But to win you need talent and material.

To know in war how to recognize an opportunity and seize it is better than anything else.

Present wars impoverish the lords that win as much as those that lose.

It is the business of cavalry to follow up the victory, and to prevent the beaten army from rallying.

Hence it happened that all the armed prophets conquered, all the unarmed perished. [It., Di qui nacque che tutti li profeti armati vincero, e li disarmati rovinarono.]

Violence must be inflicted once for all; people will then forget what it tastes like and so be less resentful. Benefits must be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.

In war, practice dissimulation and you will succeed.

War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts.

Fierce language and pretentious advances are signs that the enemy is about to retreat.