Strategic Caution Quotes

We necessarily operate in an environment in which there's a great deal of uncertainty. In such an environment, it makes sense to use a risk-management approach to identify and avoid the big mistakes. That's one reason I favor a cautious approach.

… concessions to adversaries only end in self-reproach, and the more strictly they are avoided, the greater will be the chance of security

Notifying the enemy in advance of our withdrawal dates or reassuring the enemy that we will not use certain capabilities like our ground forces should be avoided.

Never pick a quarrel with someone who buys their ink in barrels.

No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique. If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are. Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.

One who sets the entire army in motion to chase an advantage will not attain it.

An intelligence officer in the field is supposed to keep his home office informed of what he is doing. That is quite true, but with some reservations, as he may overdo it. If, for example, he tells too much or asks for instructions, he is likely to get some he doesn't relish.

Delta: We never make the same mistake three times.

I am so restrained in all my military movements that it is impossible to undertake anything effectual

Caution always, but when a man acts he should act suddenly and with decision.

Statesmen should, you see, be very careful how they proceed to acts of positive hostility against the towns or inhabitants of any country with whom they ever intend to be on terms of alliance or kindness

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

Our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please …. Our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

And now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.

Inclined to peace by his temper and situation, it was easy for [Augustus] to discover that Rome, in her present exalted situation, had much less to hope than to fear from the chance of arms; and that, in the prosecution of remote wars, the undertaking became every day more difficult, the event more doubtful, and the possession more precarious and less beneficial.

War is a lottery in which nations ought to risk nothing but small amounts.

We must never underestimate our opponents; nor should we forget that the closer we come to reaching our objectives, the more vicious and forthright will their opposition become.

MMA's not like a game like basketball, for example, that if you're winning by 30, 40 points and there's just five minutes left, you can do whatever you want because the guy isn't going to beat you. In MMA, you can get beaten in the last minute of the fight, or the last second of the fight, so sometimes you've got to be safe.

A big business man was telling Henry Ford about a coach driver of super-expertness with his whip. The driver was telling how he could flick a fly off his horse's ear with his whip-and, a fly alighting just then, he promptly did so. Next he spied a grasshopper beside the road, and he flicked it off with equal dexterity. A little further along the road the passenger noticed an insect on a bush, and nudged the driver to get him. Not on your life, replied the master of the whip. That there insect is a hornet sitting on his nest with an organization behind him. I leave him alone.

Vengeance is not necessarily successful because wrong has been done, or strength sure because it is confident; but the incalculable element in the future has the widest influence, and is the most treacherous, and yet in fact the most useful of all things, as it frightens us all equally, and thus makes us consider before attacking each other.

We should on all Occasions avoid a general Action, or put anything to the Risque, unless compelled by a necessity, into which we ought never to be drawn.

Be careful that victories do not carry the seed of future defeats.