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.

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

My business is to prevent the future.

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

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.

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I’m pretty calculating. I take stuff that I know appeals to people’s bad sides and match it up with stuff that appeals to their good sides.

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.

If you are a small company taking on a big company, you need to have a sense of humor.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

Everybody that’s successful lays a blueprint out.

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

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

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

In war there is no substitute for victory.

I believe that many of my young guys lived because I didn’t waste their lives because I didn’t have the vision in my mind of how to destroy the enemy at least cost to our guys and to the innocents on the battlefields.

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 wasn’t sure of the exact mindset you should have when you go into a Test match. So I probably became too defensive when I played my first Test match. Short balls in one-day cricket, I have never thought of just defending.

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

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

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

Competitions are a business, first and foremost.