Douglas Bader Quotes

I think that, in the end, the military behavior and intelligence services are not very different from each other. It's an attitude of hunters; they're observing the prey.

Spying is a like a game of chess: Sometimes you have to withdraw, sometimes you have to sacrifice one of your pieces to win - preferably a knight rather than a king or queen.

The U.S. public is more likely to sour on a conflict when it sees the military losing blood, not treasure. So to keep up our staying power, our skill in hunting and killing our foes has to be matched by our care in concealing and protecting our troops. Three particularly obvious requirements are body armor, mine-resistant vehicles, and telescopic and night sights for every weapon. But these things are expensive for a military that has historically been enamored of big-ticket items such as fighter planes, ships and missiles.

In a special operations mission, the concept of speed is simple. Get to your objective as fast as possible. Any delay will expand your area of vulnerability.

If you concede early against a quality team, you have to play more openly - and can get picked off.

A commander in chief ought to say to himself several times a day: If the enemy should appear on my front, on my right, on my left, what would I do? And if the question finds him uncertain, he is not well placed, he is not as he should be, and he should remedy it.

Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans, the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces, the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field, and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.

You want to make me the best soldier possible. Go down and look at the standings. Look at the all-time standings. So far you're doing an excellent job with me. Congratulations. Now when are you going to put me up against a good army?

In real war an officer may have only one chance at succeeding. Consider each problem.

Take calculated risks.

Air superiority is the ultimate expression of military power.

Therefore a victorious army first wins and then seeks battle; a defeated army first battles and then seeks victory.

We're not running out of [fixed] targets. Afghanistan is.

In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that offer.

If I am able to determine the enemy's dispositions while at the same time I conceal my own, then I can concentrate and he must divide.

Dr. Roboy, in Litvak's measured view, had a vice common to believers: He was all strategy and no tactics. He was prone to move for the sake of moving, too focused on the goal to bother with the intervening sequence.

The one great element in continuing the success of an offensive is maintaining the momentum. This was lost last fall when shortages caused by the limitation of port facilities made it impossible to get sufficient supplies to the armies when they approached the German border.

Where there is no uncertainty, there is no longer the need for leadership. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the need for leadership. Your capacity as a leader will be determined by how well you learn to deal with uncertainty.

Take care of what is difficult while it is still easy, and deal with what will become big while it is yet small.

It's a very wise thing for people to rationally sit down and look at what the risks are not only on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a yearly basis, on a lifetime basis, and then plan one's life accordingly.

The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.

Success can eliminate as many options as failure.

I compensate for big risks by always doing my homework and being well-prepared. I can take on larger risks by reducing the overall risk.

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs.

If we know that our own men are in a condition to attack, but are unaware that the enemy is not open to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory. If we know that the enemy is open to attack, but are unaware that our own men are not in a condition to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory. If we know that the enemy is open to attack, and also know that our men are in a condition to attack, but are unaware that the nature of the ground makes fighting impracticable, we have still gone only halfway towards victory.