In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

In war there is no substitute for victory.

From a young age, I learned to focus on the things I was good at and delegate to others what I was not good at. That’s how Virgin is run. Fantastic people throughout the Virgin Group run our businesses, allowing me to think creatively and strategically.

The capability of negotiating… is something that means you not only have to understand fully what you believe and what your national interests are but in order to be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind.

Forethought we may have, undoubtedly, but not foresight.

To Sun-tzu and the ancient Chinese, doing something extraordinary had little effect without a setup of something ordinary. You had to mix the two – to fix your opponent’s expectations with some banal, ordinary maneuver, a comfortable pattern that they would then expect you to follow.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon – no alternative.

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.

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

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice-president, and that one word is ‚to be prepared‘.

There are people who are really good managers, people who can manage a big organization, and then there are people who are very analytic or focused on strategy. Those two types don’t usually tend to be in the same person. I would put myself much more in the latter camp.

Competitions are a business, first and foremost.

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.

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

A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens.

Most of the stuff I try in a game, in the moment, I have supreme confidence I’m going to execute it.

You do the policy, I’ll do the politics.

My business is to prevent the future.

It is often useful, if an enemy happens to see you, to pretend that you have not seen him. Or it may sometimes be useful to pretend that you have other men with you. I did this once in the Boer War when, having crept up a donga to look at a Boer fort, I was seen by the enemy, and they came out to capture me.

What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?

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.

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.

Whatever is on the page is what I’m married to. I’m very prepared. I’m a thespian. I don’t like to improv. I don’t like to go off course ‚cause I think that’s where stuff happens. When you stick to the material ‚cause it’s written so well, that’s where the magic happens.

It’s been my experience in politics that you can try and plan it out: ‚I’m going to hit the three ball which will hit the eight ball.‘ You’ve just got to go run and try to do everything right. And then have a little luck.

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.

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.

Everybody that’s successful lays a blueprint out.

Do not reveal what you have thought upon doing, but by wise council keep it secret being determined to carry it into execution.

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

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

Wherever the enemy wants to fight, we will follow him to the ends of the Earth. We’ll adapt, we’ll train, we’ll advise, we’ll mentor, and we’ll fight, and we’ll fight well.

I think that at the start of a game, you’re always playing to win, and then maybe if you’re ahead late in the game, you start playing not to lose. The true competitors, though, are the ones who always play to win.

You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don’t believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can’t possibly foresee now.

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.

Service of any type requires preparation.

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.

It is a fine game to play – the game of politics – and it is well worth waiting for a good hand before really plunging.

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.

Don’t think in the morning. That’s a big mistake that people make. They wake up in the morning and they start thinking. Don’t think. Just execute the plan. The plan is the alarm clock goes off, you get up, you go work out. Get some.

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.

The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.

Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.

The military can buy our diplomats some time.

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.

Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.

Every seven years, I sit down and make a whole new plan.

Just because you make a good plan, doesn’t mean that’s what’s gonna happen.

Begin with the end in mind.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.

Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand. The primary thing that excites me is the mission. But we have always had a healthy understanding that we need to do both.

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

I got an album concept called ‚Exit Strategy,‘ that might be one of my last ones. It’s a term they use in business when you build companies. You create an exit strategy as you make a company. You don’t wait till you’re five years in it; you create a exit strategy as you make the company.

The only way you can beat the lawyers is to die with nothing.

Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.

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.

Where the stakes are the highest, in the war on terror, we cannot possibly succeed without extraordinary international cooperation. Effective international police actions require the highest degree of intelligence sharing, planning and collaborative enforcement.

You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.