Strategy Quotes

The only thing I really think about is: How are we making decisions and getting things done such that Walmart is succeeding and creating value 50 years from now?

You can compare the retail business to basketball. You have to have a plan, you have to hustle, you have to rely on each other, and there's a scoreboard on the wall.

Customers want to save money and time and have the broadest assortment of items, and we think that by bringing e-commerce and digital capabilities together with the stores, we can do things that a pure e-commerce player can't.

You have a meeting, you hear about the strategy and then you think, "Yeah, we've got to do this." And then you go home that night, you're about to go to sleep, and you think, "I can't do that." And then you get up the next morning and go back through it, and we just iterate to a point where you finally have to make a decision and go for it.

Looking ahead, we will compete with technology, but win with people. We will be people-led and tech-empowered.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Good and decent people must be protected and persuaded by gentle means, but the rabble must be led by terror.