Enemy Mindset Quotes

The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out.

Still I believe that Hanna Arendt, she was wrong when she tried to say that we are all actually capable of this, it's not true. I think it's not true. There are certain things human beings are not capable of. I mean people, even normal human beings. You have to do certain things in order to become what the enemy was and I didn't accept her philosophical outlook on that.

In the army we are drilled into execution and then supervision, to make sure everything goes the way you planned it. But there is another thing that we do in the military, that I think perhaps isn't done enough in corporate life: As soon as you have made that decision, you start on the contingency planning. Because there is, as we like to say, a thinking, breathing enemy out there, who is not going to let you do just what you want.

If we had a better understanding of the ways we think about enemies, we might be able to think of more rational ways of settling conflict.

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

Always dress like you're going to see your worst enemy.

To be a successful soldier you must know history. . . . What you must know is how man reacts. Weapons change but man who uses them changes not at all. To win battles you do not beat weapons - you beat the soul of man of the enemy man.

The way you win this war is to adopt a value system different from your enemy.

Anyone that goes to battle goes to battle knowing the mindset and tactics of their enemies.

It took me a long time to understand that God is not the enemy of my enemies. God is not even the enemy of God's enemies.

Your compassion is a weakness your enemies will not share.

I am not in the camp of 'Russia has to be our enemy, and they have to be that way forever,' and I think sometimes we fight about from the past.

It is mostly a matter of wills. Whose will is going to break first? Ours or the enemy's?

Attacking does not merely consist in assaulting walled cities or striking at an army in battle array; it must include the art of assailing the enemy's mental equilibrium

If we are to put the era of nuclear terror behind us, we must struggle against the real 'enemy.' That enemy is not nuclear weapons per se, nor is it the states that possess or develop them. The real enemy that we must confront is the ways of thinking that justify nuclear weapons; the readiness to annihilate others when they are seen as a threat or as a hindrance to the realization of our objectives.

How do you fight someone who doesn't care if they get killed? You accommodate them.

One of the problems with the kill-or-capture metric is that it has often been to the exclusion of having a deeper, richer understanding of the movement, its origins, and our adversaries' mindset. The nuances are absolutely critical. Our adversaries are wedded to the ideology that informs and fuels their struggle, and, by not paying attention, we risk not knowing our enemy.

Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy.

I don't really have a nemesis, but I have a series of hundreds of small enemies that fuel me. Everyone I meet I assume is out to get me and that fuels my fire on a daily basis.

'They' is... stay away from them, please. There is so many different definitions of 'they.' You might have a personal 'they.' They against you; they want you broken and miserable. They don't like winners; they don't like people who's blessed. So everybody's got a different 'they.'

When you edit, you imagine your enemy is seated on the other side of the table. Your enemy! And your enemy is going to read that with a viciousness, because he knows where you didn't work on it. He's going to shake it and really aim for that jugular. So you are going to polish, and revise, and rewrite, and cut out, and shape it, so that your enemy has no place to grip it. That's how you revise.