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.

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

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

Gulf Lesson One is the value of airpower.

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.

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

The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another.

Solutions are not the answer.

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

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

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

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.

I’ve learned new footwork patterns that are very unusual. I’ve learned how to find a lower centre of gravity, and I’ve found more angles to throw shots.

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

The great defense against the air menace is to attack the enemy’s aircraft as near as possible to their point of departure.

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.

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

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

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.

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

Football is a game you cannot play without making mistakes.

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.

I swam underwater for 50 meters at a time and walked the length of the pool underwater, with a brick in each hand, all on a single breath.

It’s a juicy thing to say we’re building a phone, which is why people want to write about it. But it’s so clearly the wrong strategy for us.

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

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

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.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

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

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

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.

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 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.

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

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.

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

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.

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

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.

Everybody that’s successful lays a blueprint out.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.

To me, we’re marketing hope.

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’ve tried different things through the years to get some play on mainstream. I’ll try to tailor-make it.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

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.

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.

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.

I’m bad at picking heroes.

The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.

It’s plain hokum. If you can’t convince ‚em, confuse ‚em. It’s an old political trick. But this time it won’t work.

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.