Hideki Tojo Quotes

Some think that by preparing to deal with crises you make them more likely. I think the wiser judgment is the contrary. In this area at least, if you want peace or stability, it's better to prepare for war or instability.

Well, you know, any defense force worth its salt has to be able to deal with uncertainty, has to be able to deal with events that we may not have planned for.

Good leaders need a positive agenda, not just an agenda of dealing with crisis.

It seems to me worth while for this Government to try whether it will not work on a large enough scale to be of use in the event of war.

We have generals working on worst-case scenarios; we need statesmen on best cases.

I’ve worked as a leader for many years and I’ve always trained myself to be prepared for the worst.

If there is going to be a war – and no one can say that there is not – we must keep him fresh to be our war Prime Minister

When you're a leader at any level of any scale, leaders are defined at times of crisis.

What he's really talking about - and I'm speaking for Mike Flynn, not Donald Trump - is that he's saying, essentially, we have to have options. We have to have a lot of options. And, frankly, we do. We do have a lot of options.

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

We should have communicated to Iran that we are prepared, that we are considering military options. They're not just on the table, they are in our hands.

In the army we are drilled into execution and then supervision, to make sure everything goes the way you planned it. But there is another thing that we do in the military, that I think perhaps isn't done enough in corporate life: As soon as you have made that decision, you start on the contingency planning. Because there is, as we like to say, a thinking, breathing enemy out there, who is not going to let you do just what you want.

There is nearly always uh, a process of wanting contingency plans made in the military.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

When our sailors in the Persian Gulf accidentally strayed into Iranian waters, that could have sparked a major international incident. Some folks here in Washington rushed to declare that it was the start of another hostage crisis. Instead, we worked directly with the Iranian government and secured the release of our sailors in less than 24 hours.

[To the House of Representatives before casting the only vote against allowing George W. Bush to use 'all necesary and appropriate force' in response to 9/11:] We must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target. We cannot repeat past mistakes.

I urge everyone to be patient and reasonable and I warn against shooting from the hip in the truest sense of the term. Pressure and dialogue are needed.

There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.

I can't possibly put myself in his [Tony Blair's] shoes and be inside his head but what I can say is that the security of the nation is the first duty of any government but at the same time for me going to war would always be the last resort. I would exhaust all other opportunities first.

The telephone gives us the happiness of being together yet safely apart.

To truly prepare for the unexpected, you've got to position yourself to keep a couple of options open so when the door of opportunity opens, you're close enough to squeeze through.

Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.

At the request of our Japanese partners, we have reopened these talks [about territories]. What command is given in this case in judo? You probably know better than I do: Yoshi (continue). So we will continue.

It was interesting watching the Afghanistan war review deliberations, this three-month process where Barack Obama did the most thorough foreign policy review ever by a modern American president. Compare that to Libya. For a month he said we weren't going to do anything, then suddenly changed his mind and did it on the fly. My view is that it's not how long or quick you take to make a decision, it's whether you make the right one.

When you have a time of crisis what happens depends on what ideas are floating around, and what ideas have been developed, and thought through, and are made effective.