John Hewson Quotes

The whole art of war consists of guessing at what is on the other side of the hill.

When you start a military intervention, you do not know what will happen even in the next hour

War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.

I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, 'I'm confident that we can do this.'

How do Ferrari know what I'm doing next year when I don't know what I'm doing next week?

Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.

I am interested in seeing how a certain situation can develop with potential accidents. First, I am inspired by the acts of potential collaborators. It tends to be an action they have already done in a different context. I am very clear about the rules of the game, but once it's launched, I don't intervene at all.

The war is not planned. I don't believe that any responsible person plans it. But it's thought as possible.

In war everything is uncertain, and calculations have to be made with variable quantities …. all military action is intertwined with psychological forces and effects.

A military leader should always understand, of all human endeavors... the one that's the most unpredictable and the most costly is warfare.

One of the lessons learned in the Middle East is to never try to anticipate the other side's moves.

Trying to predict the future is a loser's game.

It's all well and good to look back after the fact and see what we should have done, but we rarely know what path is best when we take that first step.

In the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.

It would be wonderful if we could avoid the setbacks with timely exits, but nobody has figured out how to predict them.

It is easy to make plans in this world; even a cat can do it; and when one is out in those remote oceans it is noticeable that a cat's plans and a man's are worth about the same. There is much the same shrinkage in both, in the matter of values.

You have to make smart decisions, but you never know what will happen in the future.

Few can foresee whither their road will lead them, till they come to its end.

War is...a trinity of violence, chance, and reason.

Uncertainty and danger are always closely allied, thus making any kind of an unknown world a world of peril and evil possibilities.

To deal with future we have to deal with possibilities. Analysis will only tell us what is.

It is the business of the future to be dangerous.

In tactics, action is the governing rule of war.

The risk of a business being hit by a low probability, high impact event is far higher than most boards realize because the number of potential wild cards is so great.

But neither of us knows, because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it.