Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes on Strategy
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Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. We're not giving up. We're waiting for a better opportunity to win.
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It just happens to be very important to me to win with the hand I was dealt.
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No, no, never send interim reports. Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must either then obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.
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The best strategies run on rails. Live or die, you make your goal.
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A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack.
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If you want to catch something, running after it isn't always the best way.
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Leadership is mostly a power over imagination, and never more so than in combat. The bravest man alone can only be an armed lunatic. The real strength lies in the ability to get others to do your work.
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I suppose my determination to be a soldier stems from that date. I mean the real thing, not the parades and the uniforms and the glamour, but the logistics, the offensive advantage, the speed and surprise--the power. A better-prepared, stronger, toughter, faster, meaner son-of-a-bitch than any who came through that door.
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I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction.
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A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.
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Your 'accidents,' I once noticed, have ways of untangling your enemies that are the green envy of mature and careful strategists. Far too consistent for chance, I concluded it had to be unconscious will.
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Rule 1: Only overrule the tactical computer if you know something it doesn't. Rule 2: The tac comp always knows more than you do.
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If you're trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it's a lot easier to hit your targets if you don't yell going through the door.
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Organization seemed to be the key. To get huge masses of properly matched men and materials to the right place at the right time in the right order with the swiftness required to even grasp survival--to wrestle an infinitely complex and confusing reality into the abstract shape of victory--organization, it seemed, might even outrank courage as a soldierly virtue.