Quotes

• “…generalship is acquired only by experience and the study of the campaigns of all great captains.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
• “Read over and over again the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus, Turenne, Eugene and Frederick. Make them your models. This is the only way to become a great general and to master the secrets of the art of war. With your own genius enlightened by this study, you will reject all maxims opposed to those of these great commanders.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
  
• “Strategy is the art of making use of time and space” -Napoleon Bonaparte
• “I would often amuse myself at daydreaming, in order afterwards to measure my dreams with the calipers of reason” -Napoleon Bonaparte
• “The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution; you have a genius for keeping what you have got, accompanied by a total want of invention, and when forced to act you never go far enough… It is the law as in art, so in politics, that improvements ever prevail; and though fixed usages may be best for undisturbed communities, constant necessities of action must be accompanied by the constant improvement of methods. Thus it happens that the vast experience of Athens has carried her further than you on the path of innovation.” -Thucydides
  
• “Nor ought we to believe that there is much difference between man and man, but to think that the superiority lies with him who is reared in the severest school.” -Thucydides
  
• “Developers of “expert systems” acknowledge that the most advanced computers fall well short of human virtuosos largely because of the machines’ inability to be inventive and integrative, to go beyond tried and true decision rules . The technicians who developed Deep Blue, the computer that first beat chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov in 1997, rightly understood their achievement as the construction of a sophisticated calculator, not a machine capable of artificial intelligence. All efforts by technicians to mimic the integrative judgment of a grandmaster, rather than simply relying on fast and extensive computational power, have “failed miserably.” Leslie Paul Thiele, Heart of Judgements
• “This is why I liken fiction to a simulation that runs on the software of our minds. And it is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life.” Kieth Oatley
• “We are the only animal on the planet that learns from mistakes we haven’t personally made, because “imagination is a life simulator.” Daniel Gilbert
• “Few people have the imagination for reality” -Goethe
• “In the realm of strategy, only contradiction and paradox work. Common sense and straightforward linear logic always fails” -Edward Luttwak
• “no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” -Clausewitz, On War
• “the enemy of a good plan is the illusion of a perfect one.” -Clausewitz, On War
• “Epistemologically speaking, the source of all erroneous views on war lies in idealist and mechanistic tendencies” -Mao Tse Tung
• “Language does not extend to explaining the Way (strategy) in detail, but it can be grasped intuitively.” -Miyamoto Musashi
• “If you merely read this book you will not reach the Way of strategy.” Miyamoto Musashi
• “It is the warrior’s way to follow the paths of both the sword and the pen. Even if he has no natural ability in these paths, a warrior is expected to do his share to the best of his ability.”-Miyamoto Musashi
• “The principle of strategy is having one thing, to know ten thousand things.” -Miyamoto Musashi
• “Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.” -Miyamoto Musashi
• “I failed in some subjects in exam, but my friend passed in all. Now he is an engineer in Microsoft and I am the owner of Microsoft.” -Bill Gates
• “In soft regions are born soft men” -Herodotus
• “Unless we grow greater we shall become less” -Prussian motto after the Napoleonic wars.
• “Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.” -Heraclitus
• “The human sciences approach is a radically different way to understand customers. It starts by examining the roots of their behaviors—the complex interplay between their interior lives and their social, cultural, and physical worlds. It digs deep for insights that elude more traditional business tools.his nonlinear process—what we call sensemaking—reveals the often subtle and unconscious motivations informing consumer behavior and can lead to insights that enable transformations in product development, organizational culture, and even corporate strategy.” – A Moment of Clarity

“What is the use of life if one merely vegetates? What is the point of seeing if one only crams facts into his memory? In brief, what good is experience if it is not directed by reflection. Vegetius stated that war must be a study and peace an exercise, and he is right.Experience  deserves  to  be  investigated,  for  it  is  only  after repeated examination of what one has done that the artists succeed in understanding principles and in moments of leisure, in times of rest, that new material is prepared for experiment. Such investigations are the products of an applied mind, but this diligence is rare and, on the contrary, it is common to see men who have used all of their limbs without once in their lives having utilized their minds. Thought, the faculty of combining ideas, is what distinguishes man from a beast of burden. A mule who has carried a pack for ten campaigns under Prince Eugene will be no better tactician for it, and it must be confessed, to the disgrace of humanity, that many men grow old in an otherwise respectable profession without making any greater progress than this mule.

To follow the routine of the service, to become occupied with the care of its fodder and lodging, to march when the army marches, camp when it camps, fight when it fights–for the great majority of officers this is what is meant by having served, campaigned, grown gray in the harness. For this reason one sees so many soldiers occupied with trifling matters and rusted by gross ignorance. Instead of soaring audaciously among the clouds, such men know only how to crawl methodically in the mire. They are never perplexed and will never know the causes of their triumphs or defeats.” -Frederick the Great on the Art of War by Jay Luvaas

• “Albeit the jealous temper of mankind, ever more disposed to censure than to praise the work of others, has constantly made the pursuit of new methods and systems no less perilous than the search after unknown lands and seas; nevertheless, prompted by that desire which nature has implanted in me, fearlessly to undertake whatsoever I think offers a common benefit to all, I enter on a path which, being hitherto untrodden by any, though it involve me in trouble and fatigue, may yet win me thanks from those who judge my efforts in a friendly spirit. And although my feeble discernment, my slender experience of current affairs, and imperfect knowledge of ancient events, render these efforts of mine defective and of no great utility, they may at least open the way to some other, who, with better parts and sounder reasoning and judgment, shall carry out my design; whereby, if I gain no credit, at all events I ought to incur no blame.” – Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy

“For just as horses run faster when yoked to a chariot than when men ride them singly, not because they cleave the air with more impetus owing to their united weight, but because their mutual rivalry and ambition inflame their spirits; so he [Pelopidas] thought that brave men were most ardent and serviceable in a common cause when they inspired one another with a zeal for high achievement.” – Plutarch