David Galula Quotes

The challenge of our times is to leave nothing to chance.

If we have as a clear certainty with which to plan, total uncertainty, then that would be helpful.

It is most difficult to deal with. There are so many plans, so many schemes, and so many reasons why there should be neither plans nor schemes.

Life's most important questions are, for the most part, nothing but probability problems.

You have to make smart decisions, but you never know what will happen in the future.

Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq.

You can't rely on luck. I've had some stages in my career where I've said we're going to wing it, and we've always ended up in trouble.

Always have a backup plan.

No plan can prevent a stupid person from doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time - but a good plan should keep a concentration from forming.

The long view counts.

Affairs are easier of entrance than of exit. It is but common prudence to see the way out before we venture in.

I have had sufficient experience of the freaks of fortune; and as I have never trusted greatly to prosperity, I shall suffer less inconvenience from adversity.

We should not get ourselves committed until we know how everything will come out.

One of the challenges of a good policy is trying to figure out what your priorities are.

It would be foolish, in forming our expectations, to attach great weight to matters which are very uncertain.

One event makes another: what we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens; and time can only prove which is most for our advantage

Don’t ignore planning for unlikely events. Over long periods of time the highly improbable gets more probable to occur at least once.

I am someone who hopes for the best and prepares for the worst.

This is something that baffles me about managers: if you know the formation that you will revert to if you are in trouble, why not start with it?

Luck is not a business model.

Never depend on those luck moments – they are gifts – but instead always build your own back-up plan.

You have to have a plan, or else you're just creating a recipe for chaos.

You must exercise your caution in laying your plans, but be bold in carrying them out.

There's nothing wrong with a plan, but remember Von Moltke's famous dictum that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The danger is a plan that seduces us into thinking failure is impossible and adaptation is unnecessary - a kind of ‘Titanic' plan, unsinkable (until it hits the iceberg).

Fail to plan, plan to fail.