Anne Applebaum Quotes

Don't wait until you're in a crisis to come up with a crisis plan.

You need to carry out very careful pre-feasibility and feasibility studies before you enter any crisis situation.

In any aircraft you fly, you always think about what can go wrong, and you plan for it in advance. You always have back-up plans.

It is not possible to know how to behave in threatening situations before you even end up in such a situation.

When you have a time of crisis what happens depends on what ideas are floating around, and what ideas have been developed, and thought through, and are made effective.

The Marine Corps has to ask itself, 'What does our nation need from its premier crisis response force?' We are America's shock troops in war and peace. I know it sounds corny, but it's not.

And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right.

I don't believe anyone should ignore all the fires around you and stand pat and not worry about getting singed.

Well, you know, any defense force worth its salt has to be able to deal with uncertainty, has to be able to deal with events that we may not have planned for.

Americans rightly asked, if this is the way our government responds to a natural disaster it knew about days in advance, how would it respond to a surprise terrorist attack? How would it respond to an earthquake?

Nearly all government advice on terrorism sacrifices practical particulars for an unalarming tone. The usual guidance is to maintain a three-day supply of food and water along with a radio, flashlight, batteries and first-aid kit.

There aren't that many policy changes you can do, so I'd say you ride the wave and hope that maybe some of the external events help you.

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

Looking back over my more than a half century in intelligence, I have not experienced a time when we've been beset by more crises and threats around the globe.

It is necessary secretly ---and urgently---to prepare for terror. And on Tuesday we will decide whether it will be through the SNK or otherwise

Anything you say before a pandemic occurs sounds alarmist; anything you say after it occurs is inadequate.

Sometimes we have to think very clearly about the unthinkable because the unthinkable sometimes happens.

A President in a ... crisis makes, say, 10 bets a day. Maybe I made the wrong choice three times.

The actions you plan to take and the actions you actually decide to take [in a crisis] are not always the same.

I’ve worked as a leader for many years and I’ve always trained myself to be prepared for the worst.

Ninety percent of foreign policy is reacting to whatever's happening out there.

In most covert operations … particularly those that have a large paramilitary component, the planning for later stages is very incomplete. The outcome of the first stages of the operation is usually so difficult to predict that it wouldn't have seemed sensible to have planned the later stages. One can plan the first phases, but not what happens next

The military has to think in terms of worst case scenarios. In a sense, they have to play the pessimist.

It is impossible to foresee or define the extent and variety of national exigencies, or the correspondent extent and variety of the means which may be necessary to satisfy them.

You can’t prepare for the best case; you have to prepare for the worst case.