Sublime

the best strategy would seem to be one of maximum flexibility: keeping ourselves free to deal with those unknowable events in whatever ways seem appropriate at the time.

Historian Michael Howard has said that war and welfare go hand in hand. Perhaps that’s because even the most financially prepared, the most risk averse, and those with the most foresight can be completely crushed by war.

No one (except perhaps a tyrant) has a private life that can survive public exposure by hostile directive.

“We are undertaking something of a quite desperate nature,” he wrote in his diary in early September. “In a way it is like the return of Napoleon from Elba—if the guess as to psychological reaction is correct, we may gain a tremendous advantage; if the guess is wrong, we will gain nothing and will lose a lot.… [W]e are sailing in a dangerous politi

Freedom of action based on commander’s intent means that the expectation is success, not a particular way of achieving success.

The accumulation of wealth by experts, combined with the decreasing efficiency of technocracy, is creating this third institutional crisis.

Theory versus practice. Training versus improvisation. Planning versus friction. Force versus policy. Situations versus sketches. Specialization versus generalization. Action versus inaction. Victory versus defeat. Love versus hate. Life versus death. Leading from within clouds versus keeping the ground in view. But no “versus” whatever between art

That’s the difference, fundamental in strategy, between respecting constraints and denying their existence.