Strategy Quotes

If someone offer you an opportunity to get closer to your enemy, you always take it.

~ Veronica Roth

Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.

~ G.h. Hardy

Try more strategy and less force. Passion never wins any game, never mind what they say.” He said something similar now: “Excuses don’t win a game. You should try strategy.

~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

He wins his battles by making no mistakes.Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.

~ Sun Tzu

You want leaders driven by mission – not by adrenaline. No one wants to work with people who need to be heroes more than they need to be catalysts.

~ Robert Watson

Catastrophe is change on the fast track. Disaster is a laboratory for adaptability.

~ Robert Watson

5,6. The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.Excerpt From: Sunzi. “The Art of War.” iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

~ Sun Tzu

Your strategy for success must constantly move, change, and evolve.

~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

The single biggest advantage of being completely surrounded is that it gives you the opportunity to attack the enemy in any direction you choose.

~ James A. Owen

The hound and hare were both so wearied that the peasant got them all.

~ Luo Guanzhong

The reality is that the American people have no desire for an empire. This is not to say that they don't want the benefits, both economic and strategic. It simply means that they don't want to pay the price. Economically, Americans want the growth potential of open markets but not the pains. Politically, they want to have an enormous influence, but not the resentment of the world. Military, they want to be protected from dangers but not to bear the burdens of long-term strategy.

~ George Friedman

Just introduce a woman, conspiracies succeed; Of soldiers, or their weapons, there really is no need.

~ Luo Guanzhong

That image of a chessboard — an epic contest between two giant players, carefully nudging their pieces around the globe as part of a grand strategy — has indeed become a familiar metaphor for the Cold War. But it is misleading. Many decisions remembered today for their farsighted, tactical brilliance were denounced in their day as weak-willed. And big, public gestures often made less difference than the small, hidden ones.

~ Sam Tanenhaus

A war without a strategy cannot be won. Then it is merely a battle where more lives are lost than necessary.

~ Jennifer Megan Varnadore

You’re a clever strategist, but not all battles require tricks. Sometimes the simplest way to kill something is to swim up to it and bite it in half.

~ Shaun Hick

Thus it is well to seem merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious, and also to be so; but you must have the mind so disposed that when it is needful to be otherwise you may be able to change to the opposite qualities. And it must be understood that a prince, and especially a new prince, cannot observe all those things which are considered good in men, being often obliged, in order to maintain the state, to act against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion. And, therefore, he must have a mind disposed to adapt itself according to the wind, and as the variations of fortune dictate, and, as I said before, not deviate from what is good, if possible, but be able to do evil if constrained.

~ Niccolò Machiavelli

In carrying out a peacekeeping mission where the grand strategy is to maintain peace and order by persuading armed parties or other hostile elements to back away from aggressive activities, military strength is not a definite measure of success; neither could material contribution alone guarantees the winning of the hearts and minds of the people. What appears to be important is the day-to-day conduct of the peacekeepers on the ground; those who uphold the principles of neutrality and impartiality, as well as those who are able to carry all aspects of its operational duties exceptionally.

~ Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono

The two studied one another for what seemed hours, neither saying a word. Jaden’s first inclination was to yell and demand his freedom, but something held him back. Here was a new man, and a new set of mind games. He waited for the old man to speak first and introduce himself, as Dalton had upon their first formal meeting. The stranger remained silent.

~ Courtney Kirchoff

Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?

~ Frank Herbert

Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.

~ Max Mckeown

Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win.

~ Max Mckeown

A great strategy meeting is a meeting of minds.

~ Max Mckeown

Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.

~ Peter F. Drucker

To withdraw isn't a sign of weakness... It is a sign that a man knows the limits of his capabilities and the most probable outcome of the future. One who retreats to fight another day isn't running away, but looking for another road towards the same destination.

~ Lionel Suggs

Every step in life is merely part of a game. Every piece is necessary, but if you do not know how to control the game, then you become one of the pieces that are meant to be sacrificed.

~ Lionel Suggs

Consider and then act, don't react. A worthy opponent will calculate his move to entice a response from you. Make your own play.

~ R.d. Ronald

When God plays chess, you will notice that he never has to move a single piece...in order to win.

~ Lionel Suggs

Strategy is methodical, but the one who steers chaos and randomness can steer God.

~ Lionel Suggs

For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme,Nor take her tea without a strategem.

~ Edward Young

Strategy is about out-thinking your competition. Mark Zuckerberg, while at Harvard, built a website called Facemash ‘for fun’. Even today, Facebook believe that ‘done is better than perfect’.

~ Max Mckeown

It is a good thing to make a bridge of gold to a flying enemy

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Cole envisioned the next few weeks passing as a sort of painless montage: there'd be music, and different moments of the townspeople hard at work building a defensive wall around the perimeter of the town, and digging holes to serve as traps, and training with the few weapons they had. There'd be a wiping of perspiration and drinks raised to one another and the exchange of friendly smiles between comrades, and perhaps deeper, more meaningful glances between him and MaryAnn.But by midmorning of the first day, Cole had come to the unavoidable conclusion that the remainder of the experience would in fact drag on in exceedingly real time, with lots of heaving and hoing and digging and hauling under the hot sun, full of the kind of intense straining that raised the danger of a really spectacular hernia. And, judging from the few tense conversations he'd had so far, he foresaw a series of increasingly strident arguments with Nora regarding matters strategic. Plus, of course, at the end of all this effort they'd all probably be dead.

~ Michael Rubens

The doctrine of exit strategy fundamentally misunderstands the nature of war and, more generally, the nature of historical action. for the knowledge of the end is not given to us at the beginning.

~ Leon Wieseltier

Brilliant strategy is the best route to desirable ends with available means.

~ Max Mckeown

A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.

~ Michael Leboeuf

A successful economic development strategy must focus on improving the skills of the area's workforce, reducing the cost of doing business and making available the resources business needs to compete and thrive in today's global economy.

~ Rod Blagojevich

A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.

~ Jack Welch

For me, the winning strategy in any start-up business is, 'Think big but start small.'

~ Carmen Busquets

Companies that grow for the sake of growth or that expand into areas outside their core business strategy often stumble. On the other hand, companies that build scale for the benefit of their customers and shareholders more often succeed over time.

~ Jamie Dimon

I think we have to notice that the business processes we use right now for thinking and planning and budgeting and strategy are all delivered on very tight agendas.

~ Margaret J. Wheatley