Strategic Thinking Quotes

Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable, the art of the next best.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

The world of tomorrow belongs to the person who has the vision for today.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war, and how he intends to conduct it.

Ideas are just a multiplier of execution.

Generally you should act somewhere between P40 and P70, as I call it. Sometime after you have obtained 40 percent of all the information you are liable to get, start thinking in terms of making a decision. When you have about 70 percent of all the information, you probably ought to decide, because you may lose an opportunity in losing time.

I never use my sword when the lash suffices, nor the lash when my tongue is enough.

Diplomacy is the art of letting somebody else have your way.

There's so many lessons I get from chess, it's incredible, but I think the biggest thing for me has always been is that losing is learning.

Study history. Study history. In history lie all the secrets of statecraft.

Read over and over again the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus, Turenne, Eugene and Frederic. ... This is the only way to become a great general and master the secrets of the art of war.

The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.

You can only get good at Chess if you love the game

If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.

Chance favours a prepared mind.

I state my general idea of this war to be that we have the greater numbers, and the enemy has the greater facility of concentrating forces upon points of collision; that we must fail, unless we can find some way of making our advantage an over-match for his; and that this can only be done by menacing him with superior forces at different points, at the same time; so that we can safely attack, one, or both, if he makes no change; and if he weakens one to strengthen the other, forbear to attack the strengthened one, but seize, and hold the weakened one, gaining so much.

It’s not the man; it’s the plan.

Vision with action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare.

The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.

All things are created twice. There's a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation of all things. You have to make sure that the blueprint, the first creation, is really what you want, that you've thought everything through. Then you put it into bricks and mortar. Each day you go to the construction shed and pull out the blueprint to get marching orders for the day. You begin with the end in mind.

Hope is not strategy. Hope fits with vision, but we must have a strategy and a process to make our vision become a reality.

Being one step ahead makes you a leader Being fifty steps ahead could make you a martyr.

The wise does at once what the fool does at last.

The empires of the future are empires of mind.