Tactical Decision Making Quotes

One defends when his strength is inadequate, he attacks when it is abundant.

When it comes to strategy, ponder less and do more.

How does it make sense to remove an option, to tell your enemy before you go into a conflict, that you will not exercise whatever options are necessary in order to achieve victory?

The worst enemy of the strategist is the clock. Time trouble... Reduces us all to pure reflex and reaction, tactical play. Emotion and instinct cloud our strategic vision when there is no time for proper evaluation.

Politics is a game requiring great coolness.

On the foreign policy side, there's the risk of being too spontaneous and too disruptive where you end up doing more harm than damage. And figuring out that balance is where having strong people around you matters.

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.

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

The art of land warfare is an art of genius, of inspiration. On the sea nothing is genius or inspiration; everything is positive or empiric.

Grant was something rare in that or any war. He could learn from experience.

A general must be shot or befriended - but never hurt.

What matters in Politics is what men actually do - sincerity is no excuse for acting unpolitically, and insincerity may be channelled by politics into good results.

Whereas all particulars cannot be foreseen, nor positive instructions for such emergencies so before hand given but that many things must be left to your prudent and discreet management, as occurrences may arise upon the place, or from time to time fall out, you are therefore upon all such accidents or any occasions that may happen, to use your best circumspection and (advising with your council of war) to order and dispose of the said Army under your command as may be most advantageous for the obtaining the end for which these forces have been raised, making it your special care in discharge of the great trust committed unto you, that the liberties of America receive no detriment.

In war everything is simple, but it's the simple things that are difficult.

In real war an officer may have only one chance at succeeding. Consider each problem.

One thing people are gonna have to understand about Trump: He's not stupid; he's not a bull in a china shop. You may end up disagreeing with him profoundly. You may not end up not liking him at all before this is over. I don't know. But he's not dumb, and he's not ignorant, and it's not that he doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing and is doing it for a reason.

As a Marine officer in combat, I was responsible for the lives and safety of all the Marines who served with me.

When your house is on fire, you cant be bothered with the neighbors. Or, as we say in Chess, if your King is under attack you don't worry about losing a Pawn on the Queen's side

You win by struggle, and that requires understanding and serious analysis of the options and the circumstances, and then you can do a lot.

Am I Machiavellian? I don't think I'm quite the mastermind people would have me be. Everything I do tends to be very successful and it may have something to do with the fact that I'm very good, not necessarily that I manipulate. But that doesn't often occur to people.

I've learned one thing in politics. You don't take a decision until you have to.

Lahm is a scandal. He is super-intelligent, understands the game brilliantly, knows when to come inside or to stay wide. The guy is f****** exceptional

It is important not to let emotions get in the way of cold, hard, calculated military planning. Emotions may win arguments, but they don't win wars.

Don't just play your way around the course. Think your way around way around the course.

The commander must decide how he will fight the battle before it begins. He must then decide who he will use the military effort at his disposal to force the battle to swing the way he wishes it to go; he must make the enemy dance to his tune from the beginning and not vice versa.