Strategic Delay Quotes

One man restored our fortunes by delay. [By skilfully avoiding an engagement, Fabius exhausted the resources of the enemy.]

The military can buy our diplomats some time.

The art of war is to gain time when your strength is inferior.

The Iranians may simply try to run out the clock.

He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.

The more usual reason for adopting a strategy of limited aim is that of awaiting a change in the balance of force ... The essential condition of such a strategy is that the drain on him should be disproportionately greater than on oneself.

I don't want to sound too critical, but we're taking a wait-and-see approach on UltraViolet.

When you’re reactive [in foreign policy] you often arrive on the scene too late.

I've learned one thing in politics. You don't take a decision until you have to.

My history has been to grow the roots as deeply as you can before going on to the next thing. That's why it took 10 years to go from Union Square Cafe to Gramercy Tavern, and another 10 years to go from Blue Smoke's first location to its second, and five to go from Shake Shack 1 to Shake Shack 2.

… a man remarkable even among civil servants for adroitness in baffling inconvenient inquiries, resource in raising false issues, and, in, short, a consummate command of all the arts of officially sticking in the mud

If this is long delayed, weapons are blunted and morale depressed.

A war put off is not a war avoided.

Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow. Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done.

[Every] hour of delay abates the fame and force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive war.

It is true that the king has made a truce with the duke of Burgundy for fifteen days and that the duke is to turn over the city of Paris at the end of fifteen days. Yet you should not marvel if I do not enter that city so quickly.

If there is something that you have to do, resist the temptation to do it under duress. Ask yourself, "What's the worst thing that would happen if I didn't do this?" And if you can get away with not doing it at all, don't do it. And then imagine what would it feel like to have this done. Spend a day or two, if you can, just 15 minutes here, 5 minutes here, 2 minutes here, here and here, imagining it completed in a way that pleases you! And then, the next time you decide that you're going to take action about it, the action is going to be a whole lot easier.

Nothing would please me better than if they would give me three months and then attack here.

Procrastination gives you time to consider divergent ideas, to think in nonlinear ways, to make unexpected leaps.

Time is a factor in all action. An imperfect scheme put into action at the proper time is better than a perfect one accomplished too late.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid likes to reminisce about being an amateur boxer. But his Senate tenure has often looked like an endless rope-a-dope.

Ask yourself, "When does this decision have to be taken?" and having answered it, defer the decision until then, in order to give yourself maximum pondering time.

Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura's version of political theory.

Flatter them with hopes until I be ready to suppress them.