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.

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.

Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.

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

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.

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people – one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion’s den. You can’t just play around with all those big cats – you’ve got to take somebody on.

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.

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

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.

We were told our campaign wasn’t sufficiently slick. We regard that as a compliment.

There are different ways to do innovation. You can plant a lot of seeds, not be committed to any particular one of them, but just see what grows. And this really isn’t how we’ve approached this. We go mission-first, then focus on the pieces we need and go deep on them and be committed to them.

Let’s just be smart this time. I’m looking for smart.

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

In war there is no substitute for victory.

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.

You can play fast but not in a hurry. As a point guard, I can dictate that.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

To me, we’re marketing hope.

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

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

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.

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

When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn’t set out to build a business empire… For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

Everybody that’s successful lays a blueprint out.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

‚Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

Gulf Lesson One is the value of airpower.

Tobacco exports should be expanded aggressively because Americans are smoking less.

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.

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.

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.

Players who are not from the U.K. have to get used to the winds. I have to adapt my style as a result as well. Often, you are forced to keep things simple.

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

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.

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 onus is on the managers to send out an attacking formation and to tell their players to be bold.

The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

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.

Bobby Knight told me this: ‚There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.‘ In other words a good offense wins.

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.

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

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

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.

Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.

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.

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

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You’re trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren’t very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

War – An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

Football is a game you cannot play without making mistakes.

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

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 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.

There are good examples of companies – Coca-Cola is one – that invested before there was a huge market in countries, and I think that ended up playing out to their benefit for decades to come.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.