Quotes About Tactics

All the air power in the world was of little use when what they were really fighting was an ideology, not a conventional army. Our

tactics that businesses use to meet their deadlines or motivate their workers are a way of reapportioning that urgency: by moving up deadlines, by breaking them up into shorter chunks, by focusing the mission, by making teams interdependent. The trick is to feel that deadline effect constantly, even when the deadline itself has disappeared.

It was something he'd learned in the war: only think about what is directly in front of you. ... plan ahead all the time... but (don't ) feel ahead.

It's hard to find a woman without tactics. That'll be why I made one up.

No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main force.

The greatest deed in war is the speediest end of that war, and every means to that end must remain open.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

A conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla army wins if it does not lose.

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.

Policy is the art of the possible, the science of the relative.

Realpolitik for Bismarck depended on flexibility and on the ability to exploit every available option without the constraint of ideology.

What distinguishes Sun Tzu from Western writers on strategy is the emphasis on the psychological and political elements over the purely military.

When statesmen want to gain time, they offer to talk.

If chess is about the decisive battle, wei qi is about the protracted campaign. The chess player aims for total victory. The wei qi player seeks relative advantage.

Chess teaches the Clausewitzian concepts of "center of gravity" and the "decisive point"—the game usually beginning as a struggle for the center of the board. Wei qi teaches the art of strategic encirclement.

Chinese thinkers developed strategic thought that placed a premium on victory through psychological advantage and preached the avoidance of direct conflict.

The art of crisis management is to raise the stakes to where the adversary will not follow, but in a manner that avoids a tit for tat.

The highest form of warfare Is to attack [the enemy's] Strategy itself; The next, To attack [his] Alliances. The next, To attack Armies;

Especially when ultimate decisions of peace and war are involved, a strategist must be aware that bluffs may be called and must take into account the impact on his future credibility of an empty threat.

The Art of War articulates a doctrine less of territorial conquest than of psychological dominance; it was the way the North Vietnamese fought America

For centuries, the Middle Kingdom had assured its security by playing off distant barbarians against immediate neighbors. Deeply worried about Soviet expansionism, Mao adopted the same strategy in his opening to the United States.

Observe carefully; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.40

Ã…Ëœe?eno slovy Rooseveltova oblíbeného poÃ…â"¢ekadla, Amerika bude "mluvit tiÅ¡e a držet silnou h?l".

Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.