“Soldiers usually are close students of tactics, but rarely are they students of strategy and practically never of war.”

—  Bernard Brodie

As quoted in "Military air power : the CADRE digest of air power opinions and thoughts", compiled by Charles M. Westenhoff

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Soldiers usually are close students of tactics, but rarely are they students of strategy and practically never of war." by Bernard Brodie?
Bernard Brodie photo
Bernard Brodie 10
American nuclear strategist 1910–1978

Related quotes

Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehei photo

“The enemy's new strategy is to finance and organize various groups under the cover of women's or student movements.”

Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehei (1956) Iranian politician

Women bear brunt of crackdown on civil liberties in Iran https://archive.is/20130629123951/www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/27/africa/ME-FEA-GEN-Iran-Crackdown-on-Women.php?page=1 April 26, 2007

Sun Tzu photo

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Probably apocryphal. This quotation does not appear in any print translation of Sun Tzu. The first citation in Google Books is from 2002; no citation in Google Books occurs in a translation of Sun Tzu.
Misattributed

Paulo Freire photo

“Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 2

“Given a realistically sized task (and assuming that he cannot already perform it), a student is unable to generate the required performance strategy all at once. Instead, he directs his attention to various facets or subtasks and musters subroutines that build up a performance strategy bit by bit. The process is carried out by a learning strategy which, in the free learning subject, may be innate or acquired and which, for the student, is imposed externally by a teacher or learning system.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Source: Conversation, Cognition and Learning (1975), p. 261.

“Resist the radical element on campus who advocates "mass action" and violent demonstrations. These are usually the tools of Communist agitators. They get students to demonstrate, and this usually provokes a fight. When the police try to restore order, the Communists slip away in an effort to let the students take the blame. When Communist agitators got the students to wreck the Congressional hearings at San Francisco during May of 1960, the judge decided to release them because he felt the students could already see how they had been duped into fronting for professional anti-Americans.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Max Euwe photo

“Strategy requires thought, tactics require observation.”

Max Euwe (1901–1981) Dutch chess Grandmaster, mathematician, and author
Robert Maynard Hutchins photo

“In education … whenever a proposal is made that looks toward increased intellectual effort on the part of students, professors will always say that the students cannot so the work. My observation leads me to think that what this usually means is that the professors cannot or will not do the work … When, in spite of the opposition of the professors, the change is introduced, the students, in my experience, have always responded nobly.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Mark W. Clark photo

“During the class sessions I witnessed I deliberately strolled behind the instructor, looking at the students. I thought certainly some of the Korean students would break their concentration on the instructor and sneak a glance at me. I didn't catch a one. I made it a practice to make this test often during visits to ROK training schools. Never once did I catch an eye looking my way. I have never in my life been so impressed with the intensity of military students.”

Mark W. Clark (1896–1984) American general

Source: From the Danube to the Yalu (1954), p. 175
Context: After I went to the Far East I witnessed this same concentration time after time in the schools the Koreans established for their officers and noncoms. The students would squat on their haunches for hours listening to an instructor explain something like the care and use of a light machine gun. They would focus their eyes on the instructor almost without blinking. Never once did a single student that I saw let his gaze wander. I even tested them. They knew who I was, and in addition the short-statured Oriental has a compulsion to look at a tall man. During the class sessions I witnessed I deliberately strolled behind the instructor, looking at the students. I thought certainly some of the Korean students would break their concentration on the instructor and sneak a glance at me. I didn't catch a one. I made it a practice to make this test often during visits to ROK training schools. Never once did I catch an eye looking my way. I have never in my life been so impressed with the intensity of military students.

“Teachers have to be learners. They have to treat each new group of students as a different group, fresh and unknown. Teachers often perceive new students as being the same as those in the previous group and apply the same practice to them. If teachers are learners, they will study the new group of students in order to identify their strengths and weaknesses, then teach them accordingly.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

Teacher

Paulo Freire photo

“The dialogical character of education as the practice of freedom does not begin when the teacher-student meets with the students-teachers in pedagogical situation, but rather when the former first asks herself or himself what she or he will dialogue with the latter about.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

Related topics