Jeff Cooper Quotes

Usually, I'm pretty good about sorting through the options and then making decisions that I'm confident are the best decisions in that moment, given the information we have. But there are times where I think I wish I could have imagined a different level of insight.

Strategic planning is not strategic thinking. Indeed, strategic planning often spoils strategic thinking, causing managers to confuse real vision with the manipulation of numbers.

Life is a kind of chess.

It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails when you're trying to make a plan work.

Chess is a unique cognitive nexus, a place where art and science come together in the human mind and are then refined and improved by experience.

Only when you have got a clear statement of what you want to achieve, do you ask yourself how you are going to achieve it. In the military we are taught never to go for a single answer, no matter how obvious that might be.

I've always been kind of a strategic thinking person - I love sports for instance, but my interest in sports is 'cause I love watching strategy in action or playing it. I'm not into the drama so much, of the physical action. I'm interested in the coach and how he's strategizing.

Finally, you're right about one point, your entire way of thinking is predicted by what you're immersed in so you know you won't make a bad decision. You can make a bad decision but it's still in the good sphere normally if you work well. You're prepared to face a crew who wants to know everything and poses a hundred questions a minute, because you know you have good reflexes and can respond very quickly.

Botvinnik tried to take the mystery out of Chess, always relating it to situations in ordinary life. He used to call chess a typical inexact problem similar to those which people are always having to solve in everyday life.

Chess makes man wiser and clear-sighted.

Learn to use your brain power. Critical thinking is the key to creative problem solving in business.

Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.

Sometimes I do have something in my head. But, for me, I think it usually ends up being about considering all of the elements, and trying to understand the distance from where we are to where we want to go.

Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you're in trouble

The leader of a company needs to have a decision tree in his head - if this happens, we go this way, but if it winds up like that, then we go this other way.

you must be careful never to allow doubt to paralyze you. always take the decisions you need to take, even if you're not sure you're doing the right thing. You'll never go wrong if, when you make a decision, you keep in mind an old German proverb: 'The devil is in the detail.' Remember that proverb and you'll always be able to turn a wrong decision into a right one.

For me, chess is a language, and if it's not my native tongue, it is one I learned via the immersion method at a young age.

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.

Ralph... would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.

Strategists who don’t take time to think are just planners.

Strategic thinking rarely occurs spontaneously

All coaches are thinking men, or else they wouldn't survive.

The quality of a leader cannot be judged by the answers he gives, but by the questions he asks.

What I learned is that policymakers have to force consideration of actions that may not have occurred to them at the time.

I have some strategical vision, I could calculate some few moves ahead and I have an intellect that is badly missed in the country which is run by generals and colonels.