Many people don’t understand ring control. They think they do until they’re against someone who really understands how to set traps, how to create holes in the octagon that they fall into.

Some of the generals are saying, ‚We’re making progress. We are clearing an area.‘ But you really don’t defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.

Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.

The first step on the way to victory is to recognize the enemy.

A lot of people think international relations is like a game of chess. But it’s not a game of chess, where people sit quietly, thinking out their strategy, taking their time between moves. It’s more like a game of billiards, with a bunch of balls clustered together.

I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

What matters in the Sun-tzu universe are not positions of strength and power, but situations in which you have options, full of potential force.

When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were – to the very last minute – a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.

It’s not called quitting if you quit while you ahead. It’s about being aware and being strategic enough to know that you got to get out the pool at some point. You got to put your clothes back on and dry off.

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

Our priority is to go after ISIL. And so what we have said is that we are not engaging in a military action against the Syrian regime. We are going after ISIL facilities and personnel who are using Syria as a safe haven, in service of our strategy in Iraq.

You have to make sure you know why you are going to war and then use decisive force to end it as soon as possible.

You can sometimes play some really good football and not score.

I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

When we have the ball, the other team has to run. The most important thing is for the players to be prepared to be a little bit wild.

It’s what counts, isn’t it, on the Sunday, rather than pre-season testing. If you lock up, you do a little mistake, it’s nothing, but if you do it on Sunday, you lose a place or you have to box for a flat spot or something like that. It’s a much bigger problem.

An army marches on its stomach.

One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.

It is true that the king has made a truce with the duke of Burgundy for fifteen days and that the duke is to turn over the city of Paris at the end of fifteen days. Yet you should not marvel if I do not enter that city so quickly.

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

My unpredictability is what separates me. If you move in so many ways, your opponent is not focused on what he’s doing. He’s focusing in on what you’re doing, and it freezes him. When they freeze and you hit, they shatter like glass.

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

In politics… never retreat, never retract… never admit a mistake.

No foreign policy – no matter how ingenious – has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.

The military can buy our diplomats some time.

I love going one-on-one with someone. That’s what I do. I’ve never lost. It’s a whole different game, just to have them right in front of you and be able to do whatever you want.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

Serious sport is war minus the shooting.

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.

I’m bad at picking heroes.

The female loves to play man against man. And if she is in a position to do it, there is not one who will resist.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.

I knew I’d be in the UFC since I started my career.

I can’t tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on on the ground, or I was engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy. And I knew it because I’d done so much reading.

When I started analysing games in 2001, I had a DVD recorder. I’d be at home watching the games just on a normal TV, watching what I could and trying to figure out what we would be facing a few weeks later. The problem was, in the team meetings, I’d always have to keep going back and forwards with the footage, trying to get to the right part.

Solutions are not the answer.

Carry the battle to them. Don’t let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don’t ever apologize for anything.

I don’t think there’s been anything in the game of football in my lifetime that has changed college football more than redshirting.

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

It is important to emphasize that guerrilla warfare is a war of the masses, a war of the people. The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people themselves.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

It’s in the best interest of the radical left types – best psychological and strategic interest – to refuse to admit to the possibility that reasonable people can object to their ideological staff. Because if reasonable people objected, that would imply that their ideological stance is not reasonable.

These young guys are playing checkers. I’m out there playing chess.

What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.

Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense.

You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.

‚This guy’s a clown! He’s just all talk!‘ I’ve heard that many times in my career. And then they’re sleeping in the middle of the octagon.

I think the running game is very important to every offense. Being balanced is extremely important. There’s times where you have to throw the ball. You could be down late in the game, you need to come back; you have to be able to pass it when they know you’re passing it.

Pool, it became clear to me, is all about angles. First, there are simple angles, as you must hit the cue ball to either side when you are not straight on.