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Strategy Quotes

Offensive operations, often times, is the surest, if not the only means of defence.

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.

Four other pieces of equipment that most senior officers came to regard as among the most vital to our success in Africa and Europe were the bulldozer, the jeep, the 2-ton truck, and the C-47 airplane. Curiously, none of these is designed for combat.

A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research - these and many other possibilities... may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

Preparing for battle, plans were essential. But once the battle was joined, plans were useless.

My life has been largely spent in affairs that required organization. But organization itself, necessary as it is, is never sufficient to win a battle.

One of my predecessors is said to have observed that in making his decisions he had to operate like a football quarterback - he could not very well call the next play until he saw how the last play turned out. Well, that may be a good way to run a football team, but in these days it is no way to run a government.

Obviously all of us know that the composition that was reached in Korea is not satisfactory to America, but it is far better than to continue the bloody, dreary, sacrifice of lives with no possible strictly military victory in sight.

The Soviets are, in short, waging total cold war. The only answer to a regime that wages total cold war is to wage total peace.

Any orderly balance-sheet of military strength must be in two parts. The first is the position as of today. The second is the position in the period ahead.

The most powerful deterrent to war in the world today lies in the retaliatory power of our Strategic Air Command and the aircraft of our Navy. They present to any potential attacker who would unleash war upon the world the prospect of virtual annihilation of his own country.

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow. What I have just said applies to our strength as a single country.

We now have a broadly based and efficient defensive strength, including a great deterrent power, which... is, for the present, our main guarantee against war; but, unless we act wisely and promptly, we could lose that capacity to deter attack or defend ourselves.

Reconnaissance memoranda should always be written in the simplest style and be purely descriptive. They should never stray from their objective by introducing extraneous ideas.

The keys of a fortress are always well worth the retirement of the garrison when it is resolved to yield only on those conditions. On this principle it is always wiser to grant an honorable capitulation to a garrison which has made a vigorous resistance than to risk an assault.

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.

It is an approved maxim in war, never to do what the enemy wishes you to do, for this reason alone, that he desires it.

Order marches with weighty and measured strides. Disorder is always in a hurry.

Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the later than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never.

I base my calculation on the expectation that luck will be against me.