Peter Stuyvesant Quotes

Hasten slowly and ye shall soon arrive.

Anyone who takes the first step without planning the last step should not be allowed in the counsels of war.

One who speaks deferentially but increases his preparations will advance. One who speaks belligerently and advances hastily will retreat.

Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.

Councils of war breed timidity and defeatism.

Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.

The enlightened ruler is heedful, and the good general full of caution.

Fair and softly goes far.

I'm a little more measured. That sense of urgency I thought accompanied things - it can take a little longer. You have to take the long view.

I’d rather be slow and right, than be fast and dead.

There is no point in hiding that before the war we mostly learned to attack, and did not pay enough attention to such an important maneuver as retreat. Now we have paid for this. It turned out that the commanders and the staff were not sufficiently prepared to prepare and execute the retreat maneuver. Now, in the second week of war, we had in fact to learn from the beginning the most difficult art - the art of the execution of retreat.

I believe in taking things slow, one step at a time.

It is according to the shapes that I lay the plans for victory, but the multitude does not comprehend this. Although everyone can see the outward aspects, none understands the way in which I have created victory.

Take one step at a time, there's no need to rush

Haste makes work which caution prevents.

General, you don't have a war plan! All you have is a kind of horrible spasm!

We should lay up in peace what we shall need in war.

We can see now that we Americans were caught unprepared, because we were ordinary human beings, following the best advice we had at the time. No one would have guessed in 1941 that we would be attacked in such an unsportsmanlike manner as we were. No one could have visualized Pearl Harbor, either out there or in Washington. But if we had known then what we know now, we would have expected an attack in 1941.

It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military maneuvers, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.

In warfare, first lay plans which will ensure victory, and then lead your army to battle; if you will not begin with stratagem but rely on brute strength alone, victory will no longer be assured.

Never act without purpose and resolve, or without the means to finish the job.

Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the later than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never.

No one tests the depth of a river with both feet.

This high proportion of history's decisive campaigns, the significance of which is enhanced by the comparative rarity of the direct approach, enforces the conclusion that the indirect is by far the most hopeful and economic form of strategy.