Strategic Quotes

Indeed, the city has been excavated continuously by German archaeologists since 1906 (Kuhrt 2010, 1:234). Hattusa was located both within the center of Anatolia and the middle of the Hittite territory in a strategic hill-top position (van de Mieroop 2007, 121). As such, Hattusa was the center of Hittite religion (discussed further in depth below), and it was ideally located in the middle of Anatolia's agricultural breadbasket ~ Charles River Editors

The question that faces the strategic decision maker is not what his organisation should do tomorrow. It is, what do we have to do today to be ready for an uncertain tomorrow? ~ Peter Drucker

Interethnic and spiritual accord is our strategic resource, the basis for progress of our society and state. ~ Nursultan Nazarbayev

A leader's most important job is creating and constantly adjusting this strategic bridge between goals and objectives. ~ Richard P. Rumelt

Destroying Iraq was the greatest strategic blunder this country has made in its history. Unless we change course, there's every reason to believe the Iraq War will end up changing the United States more than it will ever change Iraq. ~ Robert Baer

If you accept the situation, you will find strength for strategic adaptation. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I retain what's interesting to me, but I don't have a lot of strategic depth. ~ Christopher Hitchens

It was Supreme Chancellor Palpatine himself who had presented the schematic to the Strategic Advisory Cell at the second briefing. But in fact the battle station wasn't a product of Republic research and development; it had originated with the Separatists. The captive Geonosian leader, Poggle the Lesser, maintained that Count Dooku had provided Poggle's hive with the basic plans, and that the Geonosians had merely refined them. ~ James Luceno

It might have been my human side clamoring for blood, or my alien side looking for a chance to exercise strategic dominance over a lesser life form. Either way, I was going to win. ~ Stacey Kade

Frequently avoidance of the present leads to idealization of the future ... When an event does not live up to your expectations you can get out of the depression by idealizing again. Do not let this vicious circle become your life-style. Interrupt it now with some strategic present-moment fulfillment. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

Anybody can do a deal. The tough part is doing the deal at the right time, being strategic. ~ N. Murray Edwards

Strategic execution always solves problems ~ Edwin Dearborn

And in the last sentence I would like also to mention that Poland is one of the countries with which the United States has run strategic dialogues since last year. ~ Marek Belka

The exclusion of true esoteric religion has been the business of the State since ancient times. At first this was done via the establishment of the popular idealism of exoteric religious institutions in league with the State. But in modern times the same process is done by the strategic exclusion of conventional religious cultism, mystical idealism, and higher evolutionary Wisdom from the mechanisms of popular culture. ~ Adi Da

Sometimes it's not about making a ton of money in one night, just to spend the rest of your life waiting on the next payday. You will fare better investing time, planning, strategic thinking in order to secure a stable, fruitful future. ~ Carlos Wallace

Unforgiveness is a strategic "design," craftily implemented by you enemy to "outwit" you, to cripple your effectiveness in prayer and your power to stand against him victoriously. Which is why, if I were your enemy, I would do everything possible to keep you from forgiving anyone and everyone who's done you any wrong. ~ Priscilla Shirer

We need leaders who can meet and adapt to new challenges, build strategic partnerships, build and sustain human capital organizations, and have the courage to act and react to the challenges ~ Thomas Narofsky

I'm delighted to be joining INVESCO, an organization that has been growing both in terms of assets under management and the breadth of investment capabilities offered. I see great potential in working with the accomplished investment centers within INVESCO and providing expertise to help develop strategic solutions for our clients. ~ Diane Garnick

A "Wait and See" approach to an external factor is not strategic ~ Fritz Shoemaker

We now have a theory of effective collective action with decentralized authority. The theory is based on a conception of human nature as at once social, interdependent, justice-seeking, self-interested, and strategic. That conception is consistent with contemporary social science and with ancient Greek thought. The theory explains (through a mix of ideology, federalism, "altruistic" punishment, and existential threats) individual motivation to cooperate in the absence of a unitary sovereign as third-party enforcer. It provides (through information exchange) a mechanism that enables many individuals to accomplish common goals and to produce public goods without requiring orders from a master. ~ Josiah Ober

Perry wanted to be the villain, probably for strategic reasons. But it didn't take. He wasn't smart enough; he probably didn't even know how "Ayn" was pronounced. ~ Chuck Klosterman

It was in the first Abe administration that we started the mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests between Japan and China. ~ Shinzo Abe

Both companies have product ranges with world-class brands that complement each other perfectly. Our companies share a common culture and mission. By realizing synergies and with our combined financial and strategic strengths, we will be ideally positioned in tomorrow's marketplace. ~ Robert J. Eaton

Psychopathy was positively associated with in-house ratings of charisma and presentation style: creativity, good strategic thinking, and excellent communication skills. ~ Kevin Dutton

Move away from the mid-set that the fulfillment of the organization's mission, vision, and strategic plan is only the work of leaders. ~ Sue Tetzlaff

The strategy is about putting a good team together to give you a multifaceted picture zooming into the business culture. ~ Pearl Zhu

When we planned our country's economic development, we had the strategic objective of our Revolution in mind. It was not planned for economic development [to be] solely an end in itself. There are some who have forgotten that the sole basis of our revolutionary struggle was the ideology and politics which we follow ... ~ Mengistu Haile Mariam

Michael Freeman was thirty-five years old – a former Special Forces soldier turned policeman. He was a tall and slim black man, with grey-flecked hair and dark almond-shaped eyes. His smile was tight-lipped – half knowing and half strategic. It hid a mouthful of craggy teeth. A childhood in Detroit's East Side with an aggressive, alcoholic father had taught him to play things close to his chest, to look and listen. His colleagues knew him as a patient thinker, sedulous, missing nothing given time. Intellectually savvy and emotionally guarded, he exuded certitude. In Afghanistan, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he spent several weeks as a mounted outlier with the Northern Alliance in the Alma Tak Mountains, beyond the range of reinforcement or rescue – drinking filtered ditchwater and eating nuts scavenged from corpses – and calling down massive airstrikes on Taliban positions. He gained a certain reputation. Word spread the length of the Darya Suf River valley, through the Tiangi Gap to the stronghold at Mazar-i-Sharif that there was a monster loose in the mountains and the Taliban called him 'bor-buka', which seemed to mean black or devil or whirlwind, and, at times, all of these things. ~ Simon Conway

Ashfaq Parvez Kayani had expounded: the Taliban, or specifically the Haqqanis, were an asset that Pakistan needed to keep in order to have a strong ally in Afghanistan when the American and international forces left.4 At the core of Pakistan's thinking was an obsessive desire to dominate Afghanistan in order to protect its own rear flank from India. In that way of thinking, the Taliban were guarantors of Pakistan's national strategic interests. As ~ Carlotta Gall

In reality, Kabila was no more than a petty tyrant propelled to prominence by accident. Secretive and paranoid, he had no political programme, no strategic vision and no experience of running a government. He refused to engage with established opposition groups or with civic organisations and banned political parties. Lacking a political organisation of his own, he surrounded himself with friends and family members and relied heavily for support and protection on Rwanda and Banyamulenge. Two key ministries were awarded to cousins; the new chief of staff of the army, James Kabarebe, was a Rwandan Tutsi who had grown up in Uganda; the deputy chief of staff and commander of land forces was his 26-year-old son, Joseph; the national police chief was a brother-in-law. Whereas Mobutu had packed his administration with supporters from his home province of Équateur, Kabila handed out key positions in government, the armed forces, security services and public companies to fellow Swahili-speaking Katangese, notably members of the Lubakat group of northern Katanga, his father's tribe. ~ Martin Meredith

I think, in fact, the situation with respect to Al Qaida to say that, you know, that was a big attack we had on 9/11, but it's not likely again, I just think that's dead wrong. I think the biggest strategic threat the United States faces today is the possibility of another 9/11 with a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind, and I think Al Qaida is out there even as we meet trying to figure out how to do that. ~ Dick Cheney

Every effective winning strategy is mapped out by focusing on the desired end goal. ~ Wayne Chirisa

In early 1961 a new president, John F. Kennedy, was told by military leaders and civilian officials that the Kingdom of Laos - of no conceivable strategic importance to the U.S. - required the presence of American troops and perhaps even tactical nuclear weapons. Why? Because if Laos fell, Asia would go red from Thailand to Indonesia. ~ Jeff Greenfield

I'm not in love with someone!" he shouted at her, infuriated because she was right and he couldn't do a thing about it. "I'm in love with you, and damn it,I don't like it."
"You've made that abundantly clear." She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.
"Don't pull that regal routine on me," Grant began. Her eyes sharpened to dagger points. Her skin flushed majestically. Abruptly he began to laugh.When she tossed her head back in fury,he simply collapsed against her. "Oh,God,Gennie,I can't take it when you look at me as though you were about to have me tossed in the dungeon."
"Get off me,you ass!" Incensed, insulted, she shoved against him, but he only held her tighter. Only quick reflexes saved him from a well-aimed knee at a strategic point. ~ Nora Roberts

Mischel refers to this skill as the "strategic allocation of attention," and he argues that it's the skill underlying self-control. Too often, we assume that willpower is about having strong moral fiber. But that's wrong. Willpower is really about properly directing the spotlight of attention, learning how to control that short list of thoughts in working memory. It's about realizing that if we're thinking about the marshmallow, we're going to eat it, which is why we need to look away. ~ John Brockman

To survive, you must develop secondary emotions that function in a strategic balance with reason. ~ Laurence Gonzales

For example: (1) As if governed by Newton's First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated. ~ Warren Buffett

It may seem odd to talk about something as soft and fuzzy as "passion" as an integral part of a strategic framework. But throughout the good-to-great companies, passion became a key part of the Hedgehog Concept. ~ James C. Collins

Where once universities, corporations, movie studios, and the like had been governed by a combination of relatively simple chains of command and informal patronage networks, we now have a world of funding proposals, strategic vision documents, and development team pitches - allowing for the endless elaborations of new and ever more pointless levels of managerial hierarchy, staffed by men and women with elaborate titles, fluent in corporate jargon, but who either have no firsthand experience of what it's like to do the work they are supposed to be managing, or who have done everything in their power to forget it. ~ David Graeber

Yet although Sony believed that the transition from CRTs to flat panels was inevitable, it did not invest in production facilities for PDPs or LCDs because it believed such an investment was strategically unwise. In other words, it was a deliberate strategic choice - not a legacy problem - not to invest in flat panel displays. ~ Sea-Jin Chang

Strategy is about shaping the future. ~ Max McKeown

To a degree, the West is reaping what it sowed from a major strategic blunder in the aftermath of 9/11 - the entire concept of a war on technique, that is, terrorism. Defining the enemy when fighting a concept was impossible. ~ Kurt Eichenwald

When employees feel valued, and are more productive and engaged, they create a culture that can truly be a strategic advantage in today's competitive market. ~ Michael Hyatt

A girl's gotta have her Mystery.
You can hardly win at poker if your cards lay bare on the table for all to see...
One need be Strategic... ~ Daleen Van Tonder

Remember, the goal of structured futures thinking is to come up with a picture of possible futures that will help to inform strategic decisions. ~ Jamais Cascio

Today's enterprise IT architecture is about integrating systems to meet business needs. Consequently, IT architects can't - and don't - live in a vacuum. To address that reality, Catalyst Conference 2006 will delve into strategic infrastructure technologies with the depth to which our clients have grown accustomed. With the larger number of Cross-Cutting Concerns sessions, we'll also clearly illustrate how these technologies relate to each other, and how roles, geographies, and business processes intersect within an enterprise. ~ Jamie Lewis

The leader must be in charge of getting things done by running the three core processes - picking other leaders, setting the strategic direction, and conducting operations. ~ Ram Charan

Do not exhaust your time, effort, and energy searching for the one ideal or perfect generic framework, model, or process to apply to your strategic planning endeavor. Create a new approach or adopt or modify an existing one to answer these important questions within the context of your organization, industry, and environment. ~ B. Keith Simerson

The enduring responsibility of the United States Air Force is to provide strategic deterrence for the Nation and fly, fight and win as an integral part of the Joint Team. Together with our brothers and sisters in arms, we underwrite the national strategy of defending the Homeland and assuring allies, while dissuading, deterring and defeating enemies. ~ Norton A. Schwartz

I've never been good at making smart career decisions or doing the right strategic thing, and yet somehow it's all led me to exactly the kind of career that I would have dreamed of having - if only I'd been smart enough to dream something like that. ~ Michael Cerveris

I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. It therefore seems to me that there is one and only one valid argument on which a case for giving up strategic bombing could be based, namely that it has already completed its task and that nothing now remains for the Armies to do except to occupy Germany against unorganized resistance. ~ Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

Give serious thought to why your company should care about your strategy. Specifically, find problems that the board wants to be solved. What are senior managers scared of? Part of becoming a credible strategic thinker is learning effective approaches to selling ideas for your situation. You'll know that you're getting better at selling (or pitching) strategy when managers start coming to you when there is strategic thinking to be done. ~ Max McKeown

Principles Principles are rules you have made in order to align what you are doing to some larger goal, and will sometimes change. For example, if one of your strategic goals as an organization is to decrease the time to market for new features, you may define a principle that says that delivery teams have full control over the lifecycle of their software to ship whenever they are ready, independently of any other team. If another goal is that your organization is moving to aggressively grow its offering in other countries, you may decide to implement a principle that the entire system must be portable to allow for it to be deployed locally in order to respect sovereignty of data. You probably don't want loads of these. Fewer than 10 is a good number - small enough that people can remember them, or to fit on small posters. The more principles you have, the greater the chance that they overlap or contradict each other. ~ Sam Newman

In principle, every social situation involves strategic interaction among the participants. ~ John Harsanyi

Love spiritually, not strategically. ~ T.F. Hodge

strategic changes doesn't just start at the top. It starts with your calender ~ Andrew S. Grove

The criminalization of debt, then, was the criminalization of the very basis of human society. It cannot be overemphasized that in a small community, everyone normally was both a lender and borrower. One can only imagine the tensions and temptations that must have existed in a community - and communities, much though they are based on love, in fact because they are based on love, will always also be full of hatred, rivalry and passion - when it became clear that with sufficiently clever scheming, manipulation, and perhaps a bit of strategic bribery, they could arrange to have almost anyone they hated imprisoned or even hanged. ~ David Graeber

Wine gives one 'ideas,' whereas champagne gives one 'strategies. ~ Roman Payne

Top athletes understand that to play at their best, they must alternate periods of intense performance with periods of strategic renewal. ~ Robin S. Sharma

Oh, oops, how'd we get into this adorable position? Strategic planing, my friend. ~ R.S. Grey

Peace with Israel is a strategic imperative for Jordan. ~ Abdallah II Of Jordan

Since the foundation of the State of Israel, the United States has stood by her and helped her to pursue security, peace, and economic growth. Our friendship is based on historic moral and strategic ties, as well as our shared dedication to democracy. ~ Ronald Reagan

From a very strategic level, I believe the military is part of the solution to better outcomes around the world, but at a higher level, it's really about economies. ~ Michael Mullen

Groups tend to believe their work is harder, more strategic, or just more valuable while underestimating those contributions from other groups. ~ Steven Sinofsky

Long-range missiles with hybrid thermonuclear and necromantic payloads. Grafted and crossbred infantry divisions. Strategic alliances with folkloric, extraplanar, and subterranean entities. Field deployment of weaponized paleofauna. Large-scale saturation of target areas with invasive fungal and floral xeno organisms. Megadeaths and mega-undeaths. This is the Cold War now. An American president must be found who, whatever his other qualifications, is prepared to maintain our competitiveness in this area. I'm afraid that that person is you. ~ Austin Grossman

I am running away but I prefer to call it a strategic retreat. ~ Tennessee Williams

Putin is playing the long game. He has a strategic plan in mind: the Eurasian Union, which would be in competition to Europe. ~ Hillary Clinton

If God is good, and if He wants us to subdue this planet, and if He wants us to obey the Great Commission and conquer this world for Christ, and if He tells half the human race that they're in charge of tending the home, it follows from this that the home is actually one of the most strategic and important tools by which the world will be won. ~ Rebekah Merkle

I did 50 takes on Robert Shaw assembling the Greener Gun on 'Jaws.' The shark wasn't working, so I just kept shooting to make the production report look like we were accomplishing something and to keep cast and crew from going crazy from boredom. It was a strategic indulgence. ~ Steven Spielberg

Nuclear weapons continue to occupy a unique place in global security affairs. No other weapons, in my opinion, anyway, match their potential for prompt and long-term damage and their strategic impact. ~ C. Robert Kehler

A total nuclear freeze is counterproductive - especially now, when technology is rapidly changing and the Soviets have some important strategic advantages. ~ Herman Kahn

I think she broke, but not in the way I
or any of us
expected. She didn't go crazy. She became more focused. More strategic. ~ Ronie Kendig

You can either learn to live with your Kryptonite or you can conquer it. Do what others don't and you will have a distinct strategic advantage. ~ James Woosley

Life is a series of changes - a process of going from the old to the new - from chronos to kairos. Growth, change, revival - all are processes. Life is connected. Not understanding this, we tend to despise the chronos times of preparing, sowing, believing and persevering. Our preference is to always live in the kairos times of fresh and strategic opportunities. ~ Dutch Sheets

You have to be strategic in your action ~ Sunday Adelaja

Business is war! Its leaders are strategic commanders, who boldly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat - and who perform other acts of derring-do. This kind of talk sounds great in the boardroom, and, for that matter, in the bookstore, where dozens of authors counsel would-be corporate warriors. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

In modern global civilization, war is basically a symbolic war that requires a flexible mind, deep intuition, and strategic thinking. Having lost a symbolic war, no one can gain an advantage in active military operations. ~ Elmar Hussein

Don't just let your career happen to you. You need to be strategic about how you define your leadership journey and where that takes you. ~ Denise Morrison

After a person learns from God's books how to recognize the acceptable time, he becomes a strategist of his own life and a strategic person in human history. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Productivity is the deliberate, strategic investment of your time, talent, intelligence, energy, resources, and opportunities in a manner calculated to move you measurably closer to meaningful goals. ~ Dan S. Kennedy

Better to remain silent and thought a fool, than to speak out and confirm that you didn't do the assigned readings before the strategic planning retreat. ~ Abraham Lincoln

In short, strategic inflection points are about fundamental change in any business, technological or not ~ Andrew S. Grove

A scorecard assesses progress to strategic goals whereas a dashboard assesses performance to operational goals. ~ Pearl Zhu

Protectionist measures may permit domestic industries to thrive, which under free trade would wither in the face of cheap imports. Imports may be opposed by the government in the public interest--for example because it thinks it imprudent to rely upon foreign suppliers of certain strategic goods such as staple foods, energy, or military equipment, or because it wishes to nurture an infant industry as yet too weak to compete internationally, or because it wishes to preserve traditional industries such as fishing in order to preserve employment and local communities. ~ Vaughan Lowe

Our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is there for a natural disaster or some other catastrophe. ~ Jason Chaffetz

All people here have political rights, social rights, rights to employment, and no one should face discrimination, but our strategic choice is for traditional families, healthy families and a healthy nation. One does not exclude the other and does not hinder the other. I think this is a balanced approach and is entirely the right approach. ~ Vladimir Putin

Strategic-operational KPIs alignment gives the organization a powerful tool to use when implementing change. ~ Pearl Zhu

Hadn't they watched any high school comedies? We should have been whipping him with wet towels at this point, ferocious in our fury to protect the sanctity of the girls' locker room. Instead, they were concentrating on strategic posture shifts for maximum cleavagization. ~ Kiersten White

Our nation must engage with the rest of the world. But to be successful, we must listen. Our interaction with the world must be a conversation, not a monologue ... these exchanges are a strategic pillar of our nation's public diplomacy. ~ Dina Powell

I am very pleased with the progress of the new CBS Corporation. The Company's rapid pace of change and innovative approach to emerging business opportunities can be seen in the many strategic announcements we have made over these past few months. The more focused and more nimble organization we sought to create has become a reality and that aggressive spirit of excellence and innovation will continue to benefit shareholders for many years to come. ~ Sumner Redstone

You don't climb the second mountain the way you climb the first mountain. You conquer your first mountain. You identify the summit, and you claw your way toward it. You are conquered by your second mountain. You surrender to some summons, and you do everything necessary to answer the call and address the problem or injustice that is in front of you. On the first mountain you tend to be ambitious, strategic, and independent. On the second mountain you tend to be relational, intimate, and relentless.
It's gotten so I can recognize first- and second-mountain people. The first-mountain people are often cheerful, interesting, and fun to be around. They often have impressive jobs and can take you to an amazing variety of great restaurants. The second-mountain people aren't averse to the pleasures of the world. They delight in a good glass of wine or a nice beach. (There's nothing worse than people who are so spiritualized they don't love the world.) But they have surpassed these pleasures in pursuit of moral joy, a feeling that they have aligned their life toward some ultimate good. If they have to choose, they choose joy. ~ David Brooks

I can confirm that Poland should become a eurozone country, and not just because of the treaties that have been signed, but because I consider it of strategic interest both for Poland and the E.U. ~ Donald Tusk

Most of the birds of the Old World can be found here, as Oman is on a strategic route for migrating birds. ~ Saadi

When I heard of the shady tactics of the Moonies, my initial indignation was modified by empathy. I remembered only too well all the innocuous-sounding "fronts" operated by Evangelicals in order to witness to sinners, e.g., coffee houses, concerts, philosophical forums, religious surveys. None of these was ever billed for what it was. The idea was to hook the unsuspecting sinner and win an opportunity to tell him the gospel. Similar Machiavellian tactics govern various interpersonal contacts. A campus leader or foreign student may find himself the object of an Evangelical's friendly attention, not realizing he has been singled out for "friendship evangelism" because of his potentially strategic position. ~ Robert M. Price

Every country in the world protects its economy except the E.U. We would restore economic sovereignty and decision-making to France. We would protect strategic industries, and we would protect vital areas such as the energy sector. But we would not cut ourselves from the world. There could still be trade. ~ Marion Marechal-Le Pen

Thus was born the Service Archive, a 'tool for correlating current events with historical precedents', which would be of incalculable strategic use assuming it was ever actually operational. Currently, though, its status was not dissimilar to that of countless other Civil Service projects, in that its existence had been ordained, the process for bringing it into being had been set in motion, and it would thus continue gestating until it was officially put a stop to, despite having long been forgotten about by everyone concerned in its conception.
Pg 202 ~ Mick Herron

It has become starkly apparent to me that we lack any sort of strategic foreign policy view, and when I say 'we,' I mean the country in general, but in particular, the Republican Party. ~ Marco Rubio

Now, she realized that the hardest test for a child of Athena wasn't leading a quest or facing death in combat. It was making the strategic decision to step back, to let someone else take the brunt of danger - especially if that person was your friend. She had to face the fact that she could not protect everyone she loved. ~ Rick Riordan

I don't think there are as many usability issues as there are tactical or strategic decisions related to whether incorporating social networking into your site is going to help or hurt. ~ Steve Krug

It's overwhelmingly in the self-interest of the United States of America to have a secure, democratic friend, a strategic partner like Israel. ~ Joe Biden