Quotes About Tactics

To beat a retreat with the honors of war has always been the triumph of the ablest generals.

The combination of modern ordnance and outdated tactics had, as usual, created enormous casualties on both sides.

Everybody knows politics is a contact sport.

The games and sports of the playground and streets was one registration carried with us as long as we live. Our conduct, strategies, and tactics, our ranking and comradeship. Our wins and losses.

You were attacking the enemy skillfully and subtly," Ileana went on, "but at the same time you could not have known that the bats would play a leading part in you offensive." "If it had not been the bats, it would have been something else," Vladilas said. "But I knew eventually you would be mine, as I wanted you to be.

Know your enemy as though you are planning for an invasion; determine when and where they are likely to attack and be ready to refute their messages.

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.

Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.

Command, deprived of personal judgment, can win no battles.

Nevertheless, Schlieffen decided, in the event of war, to attack France by way of Belgium.

Let us retreat when we can, not when we must. Lord Chatham

The risk of leaving East Prussia, hearth of Junkerdom and the Hohenzollerns, to be held by only nine divisions was hard to accept, but Frederick the Great had said, "It is better to lose a province than split the forces with which one seeks victory," and nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.

Anything that protracted a campaign Clausewitz condemned. "Gradual reduction" of the enemy, or a war of attrition, he feared like the pit of hell.

That vexing problem of war presented by the refusal of the enemy to behave as expected in his own best interest beset them.

I could have ended the war in a month. I could have made North Vietnam look like a mud puddle.

It was like playing checkers, only to learn that your opponent was playing chess all along.

Never underestimate the kick to the groin.

But time and surprise are the two most vital elements in war.

It would seem that Caesar's recurrent and deep-rooted fault was his concentration in pursuing the objective immediately in front of his eyes to the neglect of his wider object. Strategically he was an alternating Jekyll and Hyde.

For Caesar met failure each time he relied on the direct, and retrieved it each time he resorted to the indirect.

Avoid a frontal attack on a long established position; instead, seek to turn it by flank movement, so that a more penetrable side is exposed to the thrust of truth. But, in any such indirect approach, take care not to diverge from the truth-for nothing is more fatal to its real advancement than to lapse into untruth.

But Polybius brought out the basic lesson in his reflection-'for as a ship, if you deprive it of its steersman, falls with all its crew into the hands of the enemy; so, with an army in war, if you outwit or out-manoeuvere its general, the whole will often fall into your hands'.

Politics is the art of realizing what there is to realize.

Instead of me going out and having eight shot attempts with six 3s, let me see if I can have just four 3s and attack the basket and try to get fouls and rebound better.