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

The target of preventive war must have several characteristics. It must be virtually defenceless; it must be important enough to be worth the trouble; it must be possible to portray it as the ultimate evil and an imminent threat to our survival.

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

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

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

An army marches on its stomach.

At the end of 2003, my game was complete. Shooting, defense, using the dribble, transition, midrange stuff was all there. Then it was about fine-tuning and trying to improve in each area.

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

Drones are just another weapon, and they turn out to be a very effective weapon that puts no American troops at risk, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t use them against identified enemy targets.

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

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.

Of course, violence will not end with our combat mission. Extremists will continue to set off bombs, attack Iraqi civilians and try to spark sectarian strife. But ultimately, these terrorists will fail to achieve their goals.

God’s first line of defense – and offense – for every situation is prayer.

Our favorite holding period is forever.

There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.

Football is a game you cannot play without making mistakes.

As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it.

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

The Spanish Empire eventually collapsed because of its expensive taste for warfare and conquest.

Competitions are a business, first and foremost.

Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended.

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.

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.

The last time I visited Qaddafi was in May of 2001, 15 years after Reagan attacked his rather modest residence where he took me to show me how it had been left.

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

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

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

The Army was always big on Clausewitz, the Prussian; the Navy on Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American; and the Air Force on Giulio Douhet, the Italian. But the Marine Corps has always been more Eastern-oriented. I am much more comfortable with Sun-tzu and his approach to warfare.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Treachery has existed as long as there’s been warfare, and there’s always been a few people that you couldn’t trust.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

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.

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.

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

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.

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

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

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.

We should not fight wars without a clearly defined end state… when you go to war, it can’t be a half-step.

Serious sport is war minus the shooting.

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.

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.

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.

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.

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.

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

Israel will not tolerate Iran developing nuclear power, even if Iran claims it is for peaceful purposes. If there is an attack, oil prices will go through the roof.

Cuba has become a symbol of courageous resistance to attack. Since 1959, Cuba has been under attack from the hemispheric superpower.

Radical Islamist extremists surely hope that an attack on Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of the country, providing recruits for terrorist actions.

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

Nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate.

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.

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.

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.

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.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

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

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.

A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

The atomic bomb certainly is the most powerful of all weapons, but it is conclusively powerful and effective only in the hands of the nation which controls the sky.