Mark Goulston Quotes

Hussein has a strategy. I'm sure he'll implement that strategy, and it would be to our detriment. We're embarking on an exercise about which we know nothing.

Competing pressures tempt one to believe that an issue deferred is a problem avoided. More often it is a crisis invited.

When you start a military intervention, you do not know what will happen even in the next hour

The great problem now is that we don’t know what to do.

Time and again, players lose because they make rash decisions. Therefore, you always have to remind yourself - don't hurry. Embarking on a risky combination that cannot be calculated to the end is certainly not the right thing to do.

We've never been good at long-term plans.

It's all well and good to look back after the fact and see what we should have done, but we rarely know what path is best when we take that first step.

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.

Whenever I think about an issue, I always argue the opposite side of it. So, when I ultimately decide on a course of action, I've already been through all the conceivable scenarios, and I'm going to go for it.

It would be wonderful if we could avoid the setbacks with timely exits, but nobody has figured out how to predict them.

I probably thought that about most of the things I did. But you wind up in situations where you have to make decisions very quickly, and you just go for it a lot of the time.

Working for with someone who has no idea what they wanted... it would just be so all over the place, especially with something on this scale. You have to know what you want with this.

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

If you wait too long in Vegas, you end up with a chicken finger in your underwear.

Impulsiveness is not a trait one would choose for a person with the power to launch the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

You politicians have got to look further ahead; you always got a Putter in your hands, when you ought to have a Driver.

Hasty conclusions lead to speedy repentance.

The first EDSer to see a snake kills it. At GM, first thing you do is organize a committee on snakes. Then you bring in a consultant who knows a lot about snakes. Third thing you do is talk about it for a year.

When people think of the outcomes of their decisions, they think much more short term than that. They think in terms of gains and losses.

The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself. The most difficult is the period of indecision - whether to fight or run away. And the most dangerous period is the aftermath. It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment.

I mean maybe I was holding all the aces, but what was the game?

There is no man more pusillanimous than I when I am planning a campaign. I purposely exaggerate all the dangers and all the calamities that the circumstances make possible. I am in a thoroughly painful state of agitation. This does not keep me from looking quite serene in front of my entourage; I am like an unmarried girl laboring with child. Once I have made up my mind, everything is forgotten except what leads to success.

A military mindset is objectively analyzing a planned course of action and anticipating the likely consequences before you take that action.

If you know you don't have a win, then there's no use for you being in the game.

We should ask our commanders..." Elayne trailed off. "If there are any we trust not to be under Compulsion." "There's only one," Mat said grimly, meeting her eyes. "And he's telling you we are finished if we continue as we have. The earlier plan was a good enough one, but after what we lost today...Elayne, we're dead unless we choose one place to stand, gather together, and fight." One last toss of the dice.