Quotes about strategy
page 3

“A wedge strategy is where you focus on a highly charged issue at the borders of rationality and emotion. The emotional content of the issue can create a moral conviction that the issue needs to be resolved at any cost. Tactics that would otherwise be called into question can then be employed to resolve the issue. This sets precedent for the future use of those tactics in other arenas.”

Ze Frank (1972) American online performance artist

http://www.zefrank.com/wiki/index.php/the_show:_06-29-06
"The Show" (www.zefrank.com/theshow/)

Question, Future

“This thought had led to the fear that I might pick the wrong God to pray to. I thought that, because praying to the wrong God was expressly a sin, and because a merciful God might forgive me for forgetting to pray, it therefore followed that, even without knowing which one was the right one, my best chances lay in staying quiet and hoping for the best. That strategy worked in class when I didn’t know the answer, so I supposed it might work in the arena of theology, also.”

John C. Wright book Orphans of Chaos

Source: Orphans of Chaos (2005), Chapter 3, “The First of the Secrets” Section 8 (p. 48)

God, Fear, Hope, Forgiveness

“According to the resource dependence perspective, firms do not merely respond to external constraint and control through compliance to environmental demands. Rather, a variety of strategies may be undertaken to somehow alter the situation confronting the organization to make compliance less necessary.”

Jeffrey Pfeffer (1946) American academic

Source: Organizations and organization theory, 1982, p. 197

Dependency

“The principles of strategy are written down here in terms of single combat, but you must think broadly so that you attain an understanding for ten-thousand-a-side battles.
Strategy is different from other things in that if you mistake the Way even a little you will become bewildered and fall into bad ways.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book

Way, Understanding, Thinking

“There is timing in everything. Timing in strategy cannot be mastered without a great deal of practice.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Ground Book

Time

“Inaudible melodies
Serve narrational strategies
Unobtrusive tones
Help to notice nothing but the zone
Of visual relevancy
Frame-lines tell me what to see
Chopping like an axe
Or maybe Eisenstein should just relax”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Inaudible Melodies.
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

Help

“We know now that cultures are not oral or literate; rather they employ a menu or spectrum of communicative strategies, some of them associated with texts, some with voices, and some with both.”

John Miles Foley (1947–2012) American literary scholar

"What's in a Sign?", in Signs of Orality. The Oral Tradition and its Influence in the Greek and Roman World, ed. E. Anne MacKay (1999), p. 3

Communication

“The essence of formulating strategy is relating a company to its environment.”

Michael E. Porter (1947) American engineer and economist

Source: Competitive strategy, 1980, p. 3

“The company is a living system. Employees are its lifeblood. Strategy is the brain and measurement and communication the central nervous system. Culture is the DNA. Leadership and continued entrepreneurial energy are its soul and spirit. Governance and accountability are its rhythms and disciplines, like exercise, a means of keeping this living organism fit and lean. Leadership gives a company energy. Governance assures its honesty.”

Mark Goyder (1953) British author

Living Tomorrow's Company, (1995)

Exercises, Soul, Communication

“Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won't make us happier.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

Source: The Last Lecture (2008), Chapter 32: Don't Complain, Just Work Harder, p. 139

Time, Help

“Certainly, self-righteous anti-vivisection societies had been hollering, "Abolition! All or Nothing!" But that didn't help the laboratory animals, since while the anti-vivisection groups had been hollering, the number of animals used in United States laboratories had zoomed from a few thousand to over 70 million. That was a pitiful track record, and it seemed a good idea to rethink strategies which have a century-long record of failure.”

Henry Spira (1927–1998) American activist

Idea, Failure, Help, Animals

“The Passions and the Interests does not have the policy urgency that a contribution to public decisions may enjoy (as Hirschman's The Strategy of Economic Development eminently does), nor the compulsive immediacy that the exigencies of practical reason generate (as Exit, Voice, and Loyalty superbly portrayed). What then is so special about this book? […] The answer lies not only in the recognition that Hirschman makes us see the ideological foundations of capitalism in a fresh way, but also in the remarkable fact that this freshness is derived from ideas that are more than two-hundred-years old. The basic hypothesis— the articulation and development of which Hirschman investigates—makes the case for capitalism rest on the belief that "it would activate some benign human proclivities at the expense of some malignant ones."”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

1990s, Foreword to The Passions and the Interests (1996)

Books, Way, Idea, Decision

“In large-scale strategy you can frighten the enemy not by what you present to their eyes, but by shouting, making a small force seem large, or by threatening them from the flank without warning. These things all frighten. You can win by making best use of the enemy's frightened rhythm.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

“In a decision of the utmost gravity, Labour voted to give up Britain's independent nuclear deterrent unilaterally. Labour's defence policy—though "defence" is scarcely the word—is an absolute break with the defence policy of every British Government since the Second World War. Let there be no doubt about the gravity of that decision. You cannot be a loyal member of NATO while disavowing its fundamental strategy. A Labour Britain would be a neutralist Britain. It would be the greatest gain for the Soviet Union in forty years. And they would have got it without firing a shot.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Conservative Party Conference (10 October 1986) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106498 Second term as Prime Minister

War, World, Decision

“I urge telecommunications regulators to develop a commercial strategy for delivering effective access to the continent.”

Mark Shuttleworth (1973) South African entrepreneur; second self-funded visitor to the International Space Station

Shuttleworth urges telecoms reform, Alastair, Otter, 2006-02-24, 2011-09-11, Tectonic, South Africa, Shuttleworth, who was speaking during the opening of the Idlelo2 conference in Nairobi, Kenya … http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=888,

“In a nutshell, Blue Ocean Strategy proposes that strategy can shape industry structure, whereas competitive strategy sees strategy as choosing the right position under given structural constraints. The field of strategy has been long dominated by a structuralist view; in other words, the idea that the industry’s structure is fixed. Strategy, as commonly practiced, tees off with industry analysis and is conventionally about matching a company’s strengths and weaknesses to the opportunities and threats present in the existing industry. Here, strategy becomes a zero-sum game where one company’s gain is another company’s loss, as firms are bound by existing market space.”

W. Chan Kim (1951) South Korean economist

"Interview with W.Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne," in: Blue Ocean Strategy http://centres.insead.edu/blue-ocean-strategy/documents/e-ibosi2015.pdf, INSEAD document, 2015.

Game, Idea, Loss

“Recently, the press has been filled with reports of sightings of flying saucers. While we need not give credence to these stories, they allow our imagination to speculate on how visitors from outer space would judge us. I am afraid they would be stupefied at our conduct. They would observe that for death planning we spend billions to create engines and strategies for war. They would also observe that we spend millions to prevent death by disease and other causes. Finally they would observe that we spend paltry sums for population planning, even though its spontaneous growth is an urgent threat to life on our planet. Our visitors from outer space could be forgiven if they reported home that our planet is inhabited by a race of insane men whose future is bleak and uncertain.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Family Planning - A Special and Urgent Concern (1966)

Life, Death, Men, War

“You cannot profit from small techniques particularly when full armor is worn. My Way of strategy is the sure method to win when fighting for your life one man against five or ten.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Life, Way, Fight

“Everything can collapse. Houses, bodies, and enemies collapse when their rhythm becomes deranged.
In large-scale strategy, when the enemy starts to collapse you must pursue him without letting the chance go. If you fail to take advantage of your enemies' collapse, they may recover.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Chance, Housing

“The best strategies run on rails. Live or die, you make your goal.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Cetaganda (1996)

“The Ni To Ichi Way of strategy is recorded in this the Book of the Void.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Book No-Thing-ness

Books, Way

“The essential complement to the path-breaking book Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porter’s Competitive Advantage explores the underpinnings of competitive advantage in the individual firm.   Competitive Advantage introduces a whole new way of understanding what a firm does. Porter’s groundbreaking concept of the value chain disaggregates a company into “activities,” or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage.”

Michael E. Porter (1947) American engineer and economist

Competitive Advantage, 1985

Books, Way, Understanding

“Pressure from below must therefore also confront the state in its role as organiser of space, as the power that controls urbanization, the construction of buildings and spatial planning in general. The state defends class interests while simultaneously setting itself above society as a whole, and its ability to intervene in space can and must be turned back against it, by grass-roots opposition, in the form of counter-plans and counter-projects designed to thwart strategies, plans and programmes imposed from above.”

Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) French philosopher

Henri Lefebvre (1974) The Production of Space. Translated to English in 1991 by Donald Nicholson-Smith; cited in: "Henri Lefebvre on Governance and Space" on thepolisblog.org 2012.10
Other quotes

Grass

“Ansoff (1965) gives only some indication of what he means by environment. This can be explained by Ansoff's classification of decisions into strategic. administrative and operating decisions. He (1965, p. 8) defines these types of decision as follows:
Strategic - to choose product-market mix
Administrative to structure the firm's resources for optimum performance
Operating - to optimize the realization of the profitability potential with the present strategy.”

Igor Ansoff (1918–2001) American mathematician

Göran Asplund (1975), Strategy formulation: an intervention study of a complex group decision process. p. 22

Optimism, Decision

“Obviously my best strategy is to wait, listen, and learn.”

Jim Starlin (1949) Comic creator

Silver Surfer, in Silver Surfer, Vol. 3, no. 35 "The Name is Thanos"

Learning, Waiting

“Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate without changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Les discours sont des éléments ou des blocs tactiques dans le champ des rapports de force; il peut y en avoir de différents et même de contradictoires à l'intérieur d'une même stratégie; ils peuvent au contraire circuler sans changer de forme entre des stratégies opposées.
Vol I, pp. 101-102
History of Sexuality (1976–1984)

Change

“Fortunately, there is a strategy that does double duty: it both helps you keep control of your own insights, and makes those insights accessible to others. The strategy is: always try to express your ideas in the simplest possible model. The act of stripping down to this minimalist model will force you to get to the essence of what you are trying to say (and will also make obvious to you those situations in which you actually have nothing to say). And this minimalist model will then be easy to explain to other economists as well.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

How I Work (1993)

Idea, Help

“In today's business environment, more than in any preceding era, the only constant is change. Somehow there are organizations that effectively manage change, continuously adapting their bureaucracies, strategies, systems, products, and cultures to survive the shocks and prosper from the forces that decimate their competition. They move from strength to strength, adjusting to crises that bedevil others in their industry. They are masters of Renewal. No organization can maintain excellence without renewing. No organization can strive for excellence, or even attempt to improve, without the ability to renew.”

Robert H. Waterman (1950) American writer

Source: The Renewal Factor, 1987, p. xv

Business, Change

“Long gone is the time when we opposed the notion that we all looked alike and talked alike. Somehow we have come to exalt the new black stereotype above all and to demand conformity to that norm. It is this notion — that our race defines us -- that Ralph Ellison so eloquently rebuts in his essay, "The World and the Jug." He sees the lives of black people as more than a burden, but also a discipline, just as any human life which has endured so long is a discipline, teaching its own insights into the human condition, its own strategies of survival. There's a fullness and even a richness here. And here despite the realities of politics, perhaps, but nevertheless here and real because it is human life.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Life, People, World, Reality

“Finding an alternative to supplement military ways of resolving international conflicts has been taken up by many people skilled in various areas such as political science, economics, social studies, modelling and simulation, intelligence and expert systems, military strategy and weaponry as well as private business and industry.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Harold Chestnut, Peter Kopacek, Tibor Vámos (1989) International conflict resolution using system engineering: proceedings of the IFAC workshop, Budapest, Hungary, 5-8 June 1989. International Federation of Automatic Control.

People, Way, Intelligence, Business

“Then, in 1998, I had the chance to talk with Steve Jobs after he’d come back and turned Apple around. I was there to help Telecom Italia try to do a deal with Apple, but after that business was completed I couldn’t help asking a question. “Steve,” I said, “this turnaround at Apple has been impressive. But everything we know about the personal-computer business says that Apple will always have a small niche position. The network externalities are just too strong to upset the de facto “Wintel” standard. So what are you trying to do? What’s the longer-term strategy?”
He didn’t agree or disagree with my assessment of the market. He just smiled and said, “I am going to wait for the next big thing.””

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

About strategy starts with identifying changes, and companies taking position (2)
"McKinsey Quarterly interview," 2007

Smile, Question, Business, Strong

“!--I'm talking about the liberals. They don't have but three tactics, they don't have a strategy. They have an objective.-->The objective of the liberals is to destroy this country. The objective of the liberals is to make America mediocre like everybody else who aspire to be like America. That's their objective. And so the liberals they have an objective: destroy America, make it mediocre, become part of what they call this world order stuff.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

World, Parting, Country

“Catering to populist anger with extremist proposals that are certain to fail is not a viable strategy for political success.”

Max Boot (1969) American writer and historian

How the ‘Stupid Party’ Created Trump (August 2, 2016)

Success, Anger

“I did not enjoy the violence of boxing so much as the science of it. I was intrigued by how one moved one's body to protect oneself, how one used a strategy both to attack and retreat, how one paced oneself over a match.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Nelson Mandela in his autobiography, as quoted by Keegan Hamilton in the Grantland blog entry "Remembering Mandela, the Boxer" (December 6, 2013) http://grantland.com/the-triangle/remembering-mandela-the-boxer/ 2000s

Science, Box

“When you have mastered the Way of strategy you can suddenly make your body like a rock, and ten thousand things cannot touch you. This is the body of a rock.
You will not be moved.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Way

“A natural companion to the competitive advantage is the synergy component of strategy. This requires that opportunities within the scope possess characteristics which will enhance synergy.”

Igor Ansoff (1918–2001) American mathematician

Source: Corporate Strategy, 1965, p. 165

Nature

“As the war rages on in Afghanistan and—despite spin to the contrary—in Iraq as well, or journalistic scrutiny. The actions and consequences of these wars is seldom discussed in public or investigated by the Congress. The current US strategy can be summed up as follows: We are trying to kill our way to peace. And the killing fields are growing in number.”

Jeremy Scahill (1974) American journalist

War, Peace, Way, Rage

“Owing to the incapacity of the higher price-rate to appeal to the "acquisitive sense," it would appear altogether plausible to attempt to do so by utilizing the opposite strategy: by decreasing piece-rates, to force workers to produce more in order to maintain their accustomed earnings. Moreover, two simple observations seem to have held true in the past, as they do today: a lower wage and higher profit are directly related, and all that is paid out in higher wages must imply a corresponding reduction of profits.
Capitalism has been guided by this axiom repeatedly, and even from its beginning, and it has been an article of faith for centuries that lower wages are "productive."”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

In other words, lower wages were believed to enhance worker productivity.
Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 2 : The "Spirit" of Capitalism

Faith, Sense, Appearance, Past

“Chapter Five deals with the messiest problem of all— but the one to which all analytical roads should lead : the nature of organizational goals and the strategies used to achieve them.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1970s, Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View, 1970, p. xi: Preface

Nature, Problem

“You shouldn’t think for a minute that politicians and other organizations are not taking what has been learned from Anonymous and applying it to their outreach strategies. Anonymous has been extremely successful in mobilization and has shown how strong a crowdsourced effort could truly be”

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

As mentioned in the mint press http://www.mintpressnews.com/anonymous-revolutionized-revolt/200200/

Thinking, Effort, Strong, Learning

“My interest in game-theoretic problems in a narrower sense was first aroused by John Nash's four brilliant papers, published in the period 1950-53, on cooperative and on noncooperative games, on two-person bargaining games and on mutually optimal threat strategies in such games, and on what we now call Nash equilibria.”

John Harsanyi (1920–2000) hungarian economist

"John C. Harsanyi - Biographical," 1994

Game, Optimism, Problem, Sense

“What I propose, then, is a strategy for interrogating the Darwinists to, as it were, squeeze the truth out of them.”

William A. Dembski (1960) American intelligent design advocate

The Vise Strategy: Squeezing the Truth out of Darwinists
Uncommon Descent
2005-05-11
http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/the-vise-strategy-squeezing-the-truth-out-of-darwinists/
2011-10-23
2000s

Truth

“Designed as a companion volume to the acclaimed Object-Oriented Analysis, this book focuses on the middle part of the software lifecycle: the activity of design. It shows readers how to apply object-oriented design, and how to tailor and expand the method to suit specific organization and project needs. Readers will explore the major issues in OOD; the role of OOD in the systems lifecycle; how to use graphical notation; strategies for creating design; and hints for evaluating the efficiency of a design created with OOD. For software engineers and other users undertaking real-world systems development projects and designing overall software architecture for systems will find this reference approach to improving systems design indispensable.”

Ed Yourdon (1944–2016) American software engineer and pioneer in the software engineering methodology

Abstract.
Object-oriented design (1991)

Books, World, Parting

“There is a systemic and methodical strategy to eliminate our people from doing business off 125th Street. I want to make it clear … that we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.”

Al Sharpton (1954) American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host

On the Freddy's Fashion Mart incident, as quoted in National Review (20 March 2000) http://www.nationalreview.com/20Mar00/nordlinger032000.html.

People, Business

“Apart from the greatness of Bizos for his role in the dismantling of apartheid, defending Mandela etc, he also manifested a genius in his role as a leading member of the conservative South African Greek community, by drawing historical parallels between the 400 years of slavery that Greece had suffered under the Ottoman Turks and the 300 years or so of repression and cruelty suffered by the Southern African black tribes and mixed race people under the British and then under the Nationalist Afrikaner rule. By using this strategy Bizos was able to balance his fight for justice in South Africa, and synchronously lead the very conservative Greek community in a more progressive direction.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

On George Bizos
Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

People, Justice, Communication, Suffering

“The approach that dominates organizational theory, teaching, and practice for most of the twentieth century looked at organizations from the top-down, starting with a view of the CEO as the "leader" who shapes the organization's strategy, structure, culture, and performance potential. The nature of work and the role of the workforce enter the analysis much later, after considerations of technology and organization design have been considered. However, if the key source of value in the twenty-first-century organization is to be derived from the workforce itself, an inversion of the dominant approach will be needed. The new perspective will start not at the top of the organization, but at but at the front lines, with people and the work itself — which is where value is created. Such an inversion will lead to a transformation in the management and organization of work workers, and knowledge. This transformation was signalled by McGregor, but we must go further.”

Wanda Orlikowski American computer scientist

Thomas Kochan, Wanda Orlikowski, and Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld. "Beyond McGregor's theory Y," in: Douglas McGregor (1960), The Human Side of Enterprise; Annotated Edition, 2006, p. 366

People, Nature, Knowledge

“After weeks of dancing around the issue, the Obama administration has expressed concern about “heightened military activity” by Russia in Syria. But what if we are facing something more than “heightened military activity?” What if Moscow is preparing to give Syria the full Putin treatment? For years, Russia has been helping Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad cling to a diminishing power structure in a shrinking territorial base without trying to impose an overall strategy. Now, however, there are signs that Russia isn’t content to just support Assad. It wants to control Syria. The Putin treatment is reserved for countries in Russia’s “near neighborhood” that try to break out of Moscow’s orbit and deprive it of strategic assets held for decades. In such cases, unable to restore its past position, Russia tries to create a new situation in which it keeps a sword dangling above the head of the recalcitrant nation. Russia’s military intervenes directly and indirectly, always with help from a segment of the local population concerned. Russia starts by casting itself as protector of an ethnic, linguistic or religious minority that demands its military intervention against a central power vilified with labels such as “fascist” and “terrorist.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Putin is turning the Syrian coast into another Crimea http://nypost.com/2015/09/19/putin-is-turning-the-syrian-coast-into-another-crimea/, New York Post (September 19, 2015). New York Post

Support, Past, Help, Dance

“Europe's economic greed was instrumentalized by Arab League policy in a long-term political strategy targeting Israel, Europe, and America. […] Through the labyrinth of the EAD system, a policy of Israel's delegitimization was planned at both the EC's national and international levels. […] Strategically, the Euro-Arab Cooperation was a political instrument for anti-Americanism in Europe, whose aim was to separate and weaken the two continents by an incitement to hostility and the permanent denigration of American policy in the Middle East.”

Bat Ye'or (1933) British writer

Bat Ye'Or, " Eurabia The road to Munich... http://www.dhimmitude.org/archive/the-road-to-munich.pdf", National Review, 2002-10-09

Hostility

“This is the Way for men who want to learn my strategy:
Do not think dishonestly.
The Way is in training.
Become acquainted with every art.
Know the Ways of all professions.
Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.
Develop intuitive judgment and understanding for everything.
Perceive those things which cannot be seen.
Pay attention even to trifles.
Do nothing which is of no use.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Ground Book

Men, Art, Way, Understanding

“Since human beings are highly adaptable it may be possible for an individual with any sort of competence to learn, in the end, according to any teaching strategy. But the experiments show, very clearly indeed, that the rate, quality and durability of learning is crucially dependent upon whether or not the teaching strategy is of a sort that suits the individual”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Source: Learning Strategies and Individual Competence (1972), p. 221 as cited in: Nigel Ford (2000) " Cognitive Styles and Virtual Environments http://docis.info/docis/lib/tian/rclis/dbl/jamsis/(2000)51%253A6%253C543%253ACSAVE%253E/advertising.utexas.edu%252Fvcbg%252Fhome%252FFord00.pdf" in: Journal of the American Society for Information Science. Vol 51, Is. 6, p. 543–557.

Learning, Dependency

“There’s no better strategy against a true rumor than inventing another fake one that claims to confirm it.”

Jorge Majfud (1969) Uruguayan-American writer

Memorias de un desaparecido (1996)

“"Is our strategy when we actually see him still 'trust me,' by the way?"
"It's still 'trust me.'"
"Oh, good. For a second there I was worried there was going to be an actual plan with, like, steps we could follow. You know, something reassuring."”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Isabelle Lightwood and Jace Herondale, about Sebastian/Jonathan Morgenstern, pg. 539
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

Way

“The best strategy is one that offers the highest compound return consistent with no risk of going broke.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part One, Entropy, Private Wire, p. 69
Fortune's Formula (2005)

“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

Women

“We are harassing them and will go on harassing them until they are totally exhausted. This is not merely tactics of a definite kind—it is a strategy with a broad perspective, directed at definitive and total victory. The Russian defence always had preparation for the counter-offensive as its aim. The Russian war plan here follows the commandmant of Clausewitz, "Swift and powerful transition to the attack—the lightning sword of retribution — that is the most brilliant part of the defense.”

Semyon Timoshenko (1895–1970) Soviet military commander

Autumn, 1941. Quoted in "The Great Offensive: The Strategy of Coalition Warfare" - Page 116 - by Max Werner, Alexander Schriffin, Heinz Norden, Ruth Norden - 1943

War, Victory, Parting

“My strategy has always been do something that is hard to follow.”

Hari Punja (1936) Fijian businessman

Interview with the Fiji Times http://www.Fijitimes.com, 25 September 2005 (excerpts)

“The diplomacy of the present administration has sought to respond to modern ideas of commercial intercourse. This policy has been characterized as substituting dollars for bullets. It is one that appeals alike to idealistic humanitarian sentiments, to the dictates of sound policy and strategy, and to legitimate commercial aims.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Idea

“[ Diversification strategy is] a firm’s commitment to diversity per se, together with the strengths, skills or purposes that span this diversity, shown by the way in which business activities are related one to another.”

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

Source: Strategy, structure, and economic performance. (1974), p. 29

Way, Business

““Organization theory,” a term that appeared in the middle of the twentieth century, has multiple meanings. When it first emerged, the term expressed faith in scientific research as a way to gain understanding of human beings and their interactions. Although scientific research had been occurring for several centuries, the idea that scientific research might enhance understanding of human behavior was considerably newer and rather few people appreciated it. Simon (1950, 1952-3, 1952) was a leading proponent for the creation of “organization theory”, which he imagined as including scientific management, industrial engineering, industrial psychology, the psychology of small groups, human-resources management, and strategy. The term “organization theory” also indicated an aspiration to state generalized, abstract propositions about a category of social systems called “organizations,” which was a very new concept. Before and during the 1800s, people had regarded armies, schools, churches, government agencies, and social clubs as belonging to distinct categories, and they had no name for the union of these categories. During the 1920s, some people began to perceive that diverse kinds of medium-sized social systems might share enough similarities to form a single, unified category. They adopted the term “organization” for this unified category.”

Philippe Baumard (1968) French academic

William H. Starbuck and Philippe Baumard (2009). "The seeds, blossoming, and scant yield of organization theory," in: Jacques Rojot et. al (eds.) Comportement organisationnel - Volume 3 De Boeck Supérieur. p. 15

People, School, Faith, Way

“Build it and they will come” is not a strategy; it’s a prayer.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Forbes "How To Test The Assumption That People Actually Want Your Product" https://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2016/06/14/how-to-test-the-assumption-that-people-actually-want-your-product/#420ab8f74217. June 14, 2016.

“History will record that the two biggest deficits of the Obama administration were the failure to create a robust economy and the president's retreat from the terrorist battlefield. For years, Talking Points has been telling you the Obama administration has no strategy to defeat the ISIS threat. But President Obama somehow does not seem to understand that the civilized world is losing the fight against ISIS. Just hours before the Paris attack the president said 'we have contained' ISIS. Obviously that is not true. They are a threat worldwide, they continue to kill people with impunity. Nevertheless, the president is unrepentant and unwilling to admit that his strategy has failed. At a press conference today in Turkey he said, 'The strategy we're pursing is the right one.' The Republican Party is taking note. Senator Ted Cruz says 'Barack Obama does not wish to defend the country,' and Senator Lindsey Graham warns, 'There's a 9/11 coming, and it's coming from Syria if we don't disrupt their operations inside of Syria.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

It is long past time that we the people demand ISIS be defeated, not contained. The O'Reilly Factor http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=4059&destinationpage=/mobile/tvshow.jsp (16 November 2015)

People, World, History, Failure

“Why has this security so far eluded us?
I believe it is because our security strategies have not yet caught up with the risks we are facing. The globalization that has swept away the barriers to the movement of goods, ideas and people has also swept with it barriers that confined and localized security threats.”

Mohamed ElBaradei (1942) Egyptian law scholar and diplomat, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Nobel …

Nobel lecture (2005)

People, Idea

“You won’t find solutions to rural India’s health issues in modern facilities that are far removed. Effective strategies will emerge only when you work with the people.”

Abhay Bang

Abhay Bang (2010) " Dr. Abhay Bang: Research with the People http://forbesindia.com/article/ideas-to-change-the-world/dr-abhay-bang-research-with-the-people/13742/1" on forbesindia.com, June 2, 2010.

People, Health

“Since lives and liberties depend upon clarity, not obfuscation, and reason, not hyperbole, let me take this opportunity today to be clear: Each action taken by the Department of Justice, as well as the war crimes commissions considered by the president and the Department of Defense, is carefully drawn to target a narrow class of individuals- terrorists. Our legal powers are targeted at terrorists. Our investigation is focused on terrorists. Our prevention strategy targets the terrorist threat.”

John Ashcroft (1942) American politician

Source: Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice (2006), p. 192

War, Justice, Dependency

“This book is a spiritual guide for the man who wishes to learn the Way.
My heart has been inclined to the Way of strategy from my youth onwards. I have devoted myself to training my hand, tempering my body, and attaining the many spiritual attitudes of sword fencing. If we watch men of other schools discussing theory, and concentrating on techniques with the hands, even though they seem skilful to watch, they have not the slightest true spirit.
Of course, men who study in this way think they are training the body and spirit, but it is an obstacle to the true Way, and its bad influence remains for ever.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Men, Books, Youth, School

“In today's competitive business world, it is not enough to do your job well; no, to be truly effective, you have to develop skills and strategies for things you'll never have to do, and situations that will never come up.”

Rob Payne (1973) Canadian writer

Source: Working Class Zero (2003), Chapter 4, p. 33

World, Business

“A country's strategy is always based on a fundamental philosophical outlook. Discoveries made during the last hundred years have shown that liberalism is the best system to improve a country's well being - This is why Andorra's strategy is based on a liberal way of thinking”

Marc Forné Molné (1946) Andorran politician

At [[wikipedia:Liberal International Congress|

Way, Thinking, Country

“Our foreign policy is a complete and total disaster. No vision. No purpose. No direction. No strategy.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, April, Foreign Policy Speech (27 April 2016)

“The very employers and politicians and publishers who talk most loudly of class antagonism and the destruction of the American system now undermine that system by this attempt to coerce the votes of the wage earners of this country. It is the 1936 version of the old threat to close down the factory or the office if a particular candidate does not win. It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them. Every message in a pay envelope, even if it is the truth, is a command to vote according to the will of the employer. But this propaganda is worse — it is deceit.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Address at Madison Square Garden (1936)

Truth, Fight, Country

“Personally I think the only meaning your life will ever have is whatever your involvement means to someone else. The best strategy I think, if you want your life to mean something, try making someone else’s life meaningful. But if you want your life to mean something five billion years from now, it won’t –no matter what. Sorry. But what matters now still matters now.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Anti-theist Answers to Christian Questions http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/22/anti-theist-answers-to-christian-questions/ (November 22, 2015)

Life, Thinking, Personality

“Note the situation is different when the player is permitted to vary his stakes. In this case there exist advantageous strategies, and the game depends on the strategy.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter VIII, Unlimited Sequences Of Bernoulli Trials, p. 200

Game, Dependency

“Dr. Roboy, in Litvak’s measured view, had a vice common to believers: He was all strategy and no tactics. He was prone to move for the sake of moving, too focused on the goal to bother with the intervening sequence.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), Chapter 39

“Meditation … puts into question more or less everything you tend to do in your search for happiness. But if you lose sight of this, it can become just another strategy for seeking happiness—a more refined version of the problem you already have.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, Taming the Mind http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/taming-the-mind (April 12, 2014) 2010s

Happiness, Search, Question, Problem

“It is … undeniable that no settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged by the hazards and strategy of the armed conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The majority of these refugees have come from territory which … was to be included in the Jewish State. The exodus of Palestinian Arabs resulted from panic created by fighting in their communities, by rumours concerning real or alleged acts of terrorism, or expulsion. It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries.”

Folke Bernadotte (1895–1948) Swedish diplomat

From the "Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine" http://web.archive.org/web/20051210224540/http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/ab14d4aafc4e1bb985256204004f55fa!OpenDocument by Folke Bernadotte. 16 September 1948. United Nations General Assembly Doc. A/648. Part one, section V, paragraph 6.

Justice, Home, Communication, Fight

“The international disputes which united and divided Luxemburg, Lenin, Lukács, Gramsci, Bordiga or Trotsky on these issues represent the last great strategic debate in the European workers’ movement. Since then, there has been little significant theoretical development of the political problems of revolutionary strategy in metropolitan capitalism that has had any direct contact with the masses. The structural divorce between original Marxist theory and the main organizations of the working class in Europe has yet to be historically resolved. The May-June revolt in France, the upheaval in Portugal, the approaching dénouement in Spain, presage the end of this long divorce, but have not accomplished it. The classical debates, therefore, still remain in many respects the most advanced limit of reference we possess today. It is thus not mere archaism to recall the strategic confrontations which occurred four or five decades ago. To reappropriate them, on the contrary, is a step towards a Marxist discussion that has the—necessarily modest—hope of assuming an ‘initial shape’ of correct theory today. Régis Debray has spoken, in a famous paragraph, of the constant difficulty of being contemporary with our present. In Europe at least, we have yet to be sufficiently contemporary with our past.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

"The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci", New Left Review (1976)

Hope, Problem, Past

“In my strategy, the training for killing enemies is by way of many contests, fighting for survival, discovering the meaning of life and death, learning the Way of the sword, judging the strength of attacks and understanding the Way of the "edge and ridge" of the sword.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Life, Death, Way, Understanding

“It is time to put policy ahead of politics and success ahead of the status quo. It is time for a new strategy to produce what we need: a stable Iraq government that takes over for its own people so our troops can finish their job.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Speech in US Senate (21 June 2006)
Senate years (2001 – January 19, 2007)

People, Time, Success

“Prior work has shown an association between diversification strategy and profitability. This paper replicates that association using more recent and complete data and goes on to investigate the sources of the association. Theoretical arguments are advanced which predict the association which will remain once the effects of varying industry profitability are removed. Empirical tests verify this prediction and permit the discrimination between the effects of industry and diversification strategy on profitability.”

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

Source: "Diversity and Profitability", 1982, p. 359; Abstract

“What is my personal strategy for the next 10 hours? Who can I talk with or what can I volunteer for to learn something new?”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

Source: Tom Peters Daily, Weekly Quote, February 4, 2013.

Learning, Personality

“States should significantly reduce military spending and develop conversion strategies to reorient resources towards social services, the creation of employment in peaceful industries, and greater support to the post-2015 development agenda.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order exploring the adverse impacts of military expenditures on the realization of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/Reports.aspx. 2015, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

Peace, Support

“The strategies that managers employ are at least as important as the facilities at their disposal.”

Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor

Source: Management Science (1968), Chapter 1, Processes and Policies, p. 27.

“As part of the National Strategy, the Government should commit itself to the virtual elimination of functional illiteracy and innumeracy.”

Claus Moser, Baron Moser (1922–2015) British statistician and Civil Servant

The Moser report on Literacy and Numeracy http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Database/moserec.html

Parting

“When things go wrong, the standard management strategy is to decide who takes the blame. This should be an underling, as far down the chain as possible, but preferably with some visibility so people know management means business.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 9 (p. 78)

People, Business

“Given its price advantage and a head start in the market, Microsoft's TV strategy will be difficult for Apple to beat.”

Farhad Manjoo (1978) American journalist

Apple Doesn't Need To Make the TV of the Future http://slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/xbox_live_tv_why_microsoft_not_apple_will_dominate_television_streaming_.html in Slate (27 March 2012)

“Business strategy should not be a grand and sweeping overview. It should be more like an under view, a peek beneath the covers to look in great detail at what is going on.”

Richard Koch (1950) German medical historian and internist

Source: The 80/20 principle: the secret of achieving more with less (1999), p. 58

Business

“Knowledge of these multiple and ever-more aggressive raids across the country constituted an identifiable pattern of conduct within and by the federal government and amongst its various agencies. For all intents and purposes, federal agents had become 'soldiers' using military training, tactics, techniques, equipment, language, dress, organization, and mindset and they were escalating their behavior. Therefore, this bombing was also meant as a pre-emptive or pro-active strike against these forces and their command and control centers within the federal building. When an aggressor force continually launches attacks from a particular base of operation, it is sound military strategy to take the fight to the enemy.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

2000s, Why I Bombed the Murrah Federal Building (2001)

Behavior, Knowledge, Fight, Training

“With your spirit open and unconstricted, look at things from a high point of view. You must cultivate your wisdom and spirit. Polish your wisdom: learn public justice, distinguish between good and evil, study the Ways of different arts one by one. When you cannot be deceived by men you will have realised the wisdom of strategy.
The wisdom of strategy is different from other things. On the battlefield, even when you are hard-pressed, you should ceaselessly research the principles of strategy so that you can develop a steady spirit.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book

Wisdom, Men, Justice, Art

“HP’s goal is to bring the most compelling entertainment content and experiences to our customers, … We explored a range of alternatives to deliver a great digital music experience and concluded Apple’s iPod music player and iTunes music service were the best by far. By partnering with Apple, we have the opportunity to add value by integrating the world’s best digital music offering into HP’s larger digital entertainment system strategy.”

Carly Fiorina (1954) American corporate executive and politician

2000s, 2004

World, Music

“Humankind too often cooks up an excuse to start war instead of making peace. Rather than developing better strategies to win wars, we should focus on better recipes to attain peace.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

War, Peace, Cooking

“The determination of strategy also requires consideration of what alternative is preferred by the chief executive and perhaps by his immediate associates as well, quite apart from economic considerations. Personal values, aspirations, and ideals do, and in our judgement quite properly should, influence the final choice of purposes. Thus, what the executives of the company want to do must be brought into the strategic decision.”

Kenneth R. Andrews (1916–2005) Business scholar

Source: Quote, The Concept of Strategy, 1971, p. 30

Decision, Personality

“I think that the best science fiction is where the story is fiction but the science is real, or at least as real as possible. If you’re going to write a good sci-fi, and you want me to believe the one wholly implausible idea that your story is about, then every other aspect of the film should be as seemingly reasonable as it possibly can be. That’s what Jurassic Park tried to do. If I am to believe that an impossibly huge reptilian monster is destroying the city, then the back story of it’s origin ought to sound realistic enough to counter-balance that. That’s what the first Godzilla movie tried to do. After that, filmmakers adopted the opposite strategy; so that everything else in the subsequent sequels had so many outrageous absurdities, each so insanely stupid, that the monster in the middle was the most reasonable element by comparison.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Weighing in on Godzilla http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2014/06/08/weighing-in-on-godzilla/ (June 8, 2014)

Stupidity, Idea, Thinking, Science

“Today, organizations are competing in complex environments so that an accurate understanding of their goals and the methods for attaining those goals is vital. The Balanced Scorecard translates an organization’s mission and strategy into a comprehensive set of performance measures that provides the framework for a strategic measurement and management system.”

David P. Norton (1941) American business theorist, business executive and management consultant

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 2

Understanding

“The management science approach to organizational decision making is the analog to the rational approach by individual managers. Management science came into being during World War II. At that time, mathematical and statistical techniques were applied to urgent, large-scale military problems that were beyond the ability of individual decision makers. Mathematicians, physicists, and operations researchers used systems analysis to develop artillery trajectories, antisubmarine strategies, and bombing strategies such as salvoing (discharging multiple shells simultaneously). Consider the problem of a battleship trying to sink an enemy ship several miles away. The calculation for aiming the battleship's guns should consider distance, wind speed, shell size, speed and direction of both ships, pitch and roll of the firing ship, and curvature of the earth. Methods for performing such calculations using trial and error and intuition are not accurate, take far too long, and may never achieve success.
This is where management science came in. Analysts were able to identify the relevant variables involved in aiming a ship's guns and could model them with the use of mathematical equations. Distance, speed, pitch, roll, shell size, and so on could be calculated and entered into the equations. The answer was immediate, and the guns could begin firing. Factors such as pitch and roll were soon measured mechanically and fed directly into the targeting mechanism. Today, the human element is completely removed from the targeting process. Radar picks up the target, and the entire sequence is computed automatically.”

Richard L. Daft (1964) American sociologist

Source: Organization Theory and Design, 2007-2010, p. 500

War, World, Error, Mathematics

“Animal behavior has evolved to battle parasites. In fact, we have parasites to thank for the existence of sex. Sex is a costly and time-consuming method of reproduction. Experiments have shown that, in the absence of parasites, species evolve toward parthenogenesis—or cloning—as the reproductive method of choice. In parthenogenesis each individual is able to self-replicate. But this produces almost no genetic variation. In the presence of parasites, cloning, while more energy-efficient, is not a viable reproductive strategy. It presents a stationary genetic target to parasites, who, once introduced into such a system, will quickly dominate it. …”

Daniel Suarez Daemon

Source: Daemon (2006), Chapter 31: Red Queen Hypothesis, Character: Sobol

Sex, Behavior, Time, Animals

“Changes don't come along in nice annual packages, so the need for strategy work is episodic, not necessarily annual.”

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

Richard P. Rumelt in: " Guru Richard Rumelt http://www.economist.com/node/12677012," at economist.com, Dec. 26 2008.

Change

“Not it is different with type 14 vehicles. They move through their world with consistent determination, always clearly after something that very often we cannot guess at the outset - something that may not even be there when the vehicle reaches the place it wants to get to. But it seems to be a good strategy, this running after a dream. Most of the time the chain of optimistic predicitions that seems to guide the vehicles's behaviour proves to be correct, and Vehicle 14 achieves goals that Vehicle 13 and its predecessors "couldn't not even dream of." The point is that while the vehicle goes through its optimistic predicitions, the succession of internal states implies movements and actions of the vehicle itself. While dreaming and sleepwalking, the vehicle transforms the world (and its own position in the world) in such a way that ultimately the state of the world is a more favorable one.”

Valentino Braitenberg (1926–2011) Italian-Austrian neuroscientist

As cited in: [ http://transit-port.net/Citations/index.html Citations] at transit-port.net, 2013
Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology (1984)

World, Dreams, Way, Time

“I never had a strategy in my dealing with other humans! I've always been very passive socially. I went along with their agenda. I had none of my own! Left to my own devices I stayed in my room or wandered aimlessly in the streets, fantasizing about bizarre things I yearned to do to big ladies, or filled with self-pity and resentment. I was helpless in the presence of other people! My main concern was to make them like me by being as agreeable as possible, and secondly to impress them with my brilliance, my sharp wit, my originality, and my fundamental saintliness. Over time, and after years—decades—of diligent practice, I became very good at this cute little performance of mine. But this performance was improvised in the moment, catered to suit whoever I happened to be with. There was no strategy. It was always an effort. Only in solitude was I completely relaxed. Funny thing…”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

From his sketchbook (16 February 1998), reproduced in The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 380

People, Solitude, Effort, Time

“I learned to play fast without agonizing about strategy or overanalyzing individual moves”

Viswanathan Anand (1969) Indian chess player

After he started playing “blitz” (the shortest format of Chess) in Chennai in early years, pages=292-293
Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower

Learning

“If any real efforts are to be made to free Black people of the constraints and conditions that characterize racial subordination, then theories and strategies purporting to reflect the Black community’s needs must include an analysis of sexism and patriarchy. Similarly, feminism must include an analysis of race if it hopes to express the aspirations of non-white women. Neither Black liberationist politics nor feminist theory can ignore the intersectional experiences of those whom the movements claim as their respective constituents. In order to include Black women, both movements must distance themselves from earlier approaches in which experiences are relevant only when they are related to certain clearly identifiable causes (for example, the oppression of Blacks is significant when based on race, of women when based on gender). The praxis of both should be centered on the life chances and life situations of people who should be cared about without regard to the source of their difficulties.”

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw book Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex

Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex (1989)

Life, Women, People, Hope

“Interpretation thus presupposes a discrepancy between the clear meaning of the text and the demands of (later) readers. It seeks to resolve that discrepancy. The situation is that for some reason a text has become unacceptable; yet it cannot be discarded. Interpretation is a radical strategy for conserving an old text, which is thought too precious to repudiate, by revamping it. The interpreter, without actually erasing or rewriting the text, is altering it. But he can’t admit to doing this. He claims to be only making it intelligible, by disclosing its true meaning.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966), p. 6

Intelligence

Quotes about strategy page 3

Quotes about strategy
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