Tactician Quotes

The skillful tactician may be likened to the shuai-jan. Now the shuai-jan is a snake that is found in the Ch'ang mountains. Strike at its head, and you will be attacked by its tail; strike at its tail, and you will be attacked by its head; strike at its middle, and you will be attacked by head and tail both.

On Gandhi: Don’t ever forget, that we were not lead by a saint with his head in clouds, but by a master tactician with his feet on the ground.

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?

Numerical superiority is of no consequence. In battle, victory will go to the best tactician."- G. A. Custer

If your opponent is of choleric temper, you should seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak so that he grows arrogant. The good tactician plays with his enemy like a cat plays with a mouse. Feign weakness and immobility, and then pounce on him.

A great tactician creates plans. A good tactician recognizes the soundness of a plan presented to him. A fair tactician must see the plan succeed before offering approval. Those with no tactical ability at all may never understand or accept it. Nor

You don't have to be a seasoned tactician to realize that your ass is cold.

A great tactician creates plans. A good tactician recognizes the soundness of a plan presented on him. A fair tactician must see the plan succeed before offering approval. Those with no tactical ability at all may never understand or accept it. Nor will such people understand or accept the tactician. To those without that ability, those who posses it are a mystery. And when a mind is too deficient in understanding, the resulting gap is often filled with with resentment.

Burning a bridge, as any tactician will tell you, sometimes saves more than it costs. I

Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.

Colonel Sven Haverstrom of the Dalbreck Royal Guard, Assigned Steward of Crown Prince Jaxon. The others laughed at that title. They were free with their jest and jabs, even with an officer who outranked them, but Sven gave it back as good as he got it. Officer Jeb McCance, Falworth Special Forces. Officer Tavish Baird, Tactician, Fourth Battalion. Officer Orrin del Aransas, Falworth First Archer Assault Unit.

It’s so rarely about military genius, who the greater tactician might be, who sat higher in his class at West Point. It’s about mistakes, some of them unavoidable, some of them purely stupid. My job is to make fewer mistakes than the enemy,

The best political tacticians know exactly when to throw someone else under the bus.

It's didn't take a genis tactician to see that failure was imminent, Alyss more powerful that Arch had supposed. He would have to focus on his contingency plan and let the Glass Eyes attack on Wonderland fizzle out--a circunstance mildly disapointing, but not worrisome. Such a strategist was the king that he had a contingency plan for his contingency plan, and even, if circunstances required, a contingency plan for his contingency plan's contingency plan.

He’s a rather brilliant defensive tactician,” Grimm said. “I agree,” Bayard said. “The problem is that he’s an inept defensive strategist.

Burning a bridge, as any tactician will tell you, sometimes saves more than it costs.

How horrified he would have been if, seven years ago, when he had just come from abroad, someone had told him that there was no need to seek or invent anything, that his rut had long been carved out for him and determined from all eternity, and that, however he twisted and turned, he would be that which everybody was in his position. He could not have believed it. Had he not wished with all his soul to establish a republic in Russia, then to become a Napoleon himself, a philosopher, a tactician, the defeater of Napoleon? Had he not seen the possibility and passionately wished to transform depraved mankind and bring his own self to the highest degree of perfection? ... He sometimes comforted himself with the thought that he happened to be leading his life just so, in the meantime; but then he would be horrified by another thought, that it was just so, in the meantime, that so many people had entered this life, this club, as he had, with all their teeth and hair, and come out of it with not a single tooth or hair left.

Most of us in life are tacticians, not strategists. We become so enmeshed in the conflicts we face that we can think only of how to get what we want in the battle we are currently facing. To think strategically is difficult and unnatural. You may imagine you are being strategic, but in all likelihood you are merely being tactical. To have the power that only strategy can bring, you must be able to elevate yourself above the battlefield, to focus on your long-term objectives, to craft an entire campaign, to get out of the reactive mode that so many battles in life lock you into.

War is a primarily a game of skill. It is a Contest of mind matched against mind, tactics matched against tactics. But there is also an element of chance that is more suited to games of cards or dice. A wise tactician studies those games, as well, and learns from them. The first lesson of card games is that the cards cannot be played in random order. Only when laid down properly can victory be achieved. In this case, there were but three cards. The first was played at the encampment. The result was entrance to the Strikefast. The second was played aboard ship. The result was promise of passage to Coruscant, and the assignment of Cadet Vanto as my translator. The third was a name: Anakin Skywalker.

When a ship sinks, the battlefield goes away. Currents move, thermal layers mix, and by the time the surveyors and rescuers arrive, the water that more witness to the slaughter is nowhere to be found. The dead disappear, carried under with their ruined vehicles. No wreckage remains for tacticians to study. There are no corpses for stretcher bearers to spirit away, no remains to shovel, bad, and bury. On the sea there is no place to anchor a memorial flagpole or headstone. It is a vanishing graveyard.

There is an important difference between the politician who is simply an able tactician, and the politician who is a creative political

A great tactician creates plans. A good tactician recognizes the soundness of a plan presented to him. A fair tactician must see the plan succeed before offering approval. Those

21.  If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. 22.  If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. [Wang Tzu, quoted by Tu Yu, says that the good tactician plays with his adversary as a cat plays with a mouse, first feigning weakness and immobility, and then suddenly pouncing upon him.] 23.  If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. [This is probably the meaning though Mei Yao-ch’en has the note: “while we are taking our ease, wait for the enemy to tire himself out.” The YU LAN has “Lure him on and tire him out.”] If his forces are united, separate them. [Less plausible is the interpretation favored by most of the commentators: “If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them.”] 24.  Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected. 25.  These military devices, leading to victory, must not be divulged beforehand. 26.  Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. [Chang Yu tells us that in ancient times it was customary for a temple to be set apart for the use of a general who was about to take the field, in order that he might there elaborate his plan of campaign.] The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.

But he and his compatriots would soon assess the cost of Taffy 3’s audacious resistance, the effectiveness of which no tactician could ever have foreseen and no statistician could have measured.

I wrote many things for and with John. I know this is one assignment he'd rather I didn't have to take on. Although I had a close – head to head, arm to arm working relationship with John, that proximity never affected the fact that from the moment I met him, through all work, I remain his number one fan. He was a brilliant performer, writer, tactician, business strategist and most importantly, he was the only man that I could dance with. He was a great – a world class – emissary of American humor. John was a patriot, a resident of the most wide open, liberal society on earth, and he took full advantage of it. In come cases, real greatness gives license for real indulgence; whether it's as a reward, as therapy or as sanctuary. For as hard as John worked, there had to be an additional illicit thrill to make the effort all worthwhile. John was a nighthawk, true. But he was not an immoral individual. He was a good man, a kind man, a warm man, a hot man. What we are talking about here is a good man – and a bad boy. Johnny – you can be sure that I'll have my antennae out for the paranatural and the spiritual, and believe me, if there's any contact with him, I'll let you know.

You can try to fight it back. You can buy a daily planner and a to-do list application for your phone. You can write yourself notes and fill out schedules. You can become a productivity junkie surrounded by instruments to make life more efficient, but these tools alone will not help, because the problem isn’t you are a bad manager of your time—you are a bad tactician in the war inside your brain.

The ablest swordsman, Hendran wrote, the consummate tactician, the peerless general: All seem invulnerable until luck turns against them. Make no mistake—place a man in death’s way enough times, and his luck will turn.

a warrior knows what he wants, and he knows how to get it. As a function of his clarity of mind he is a strategist and a tactician. He can evaluate his circumstances accurately and then adapt himself to the “situation on the ground,” as we say.

Male aggressiveness consists in asking a woman to have intercourse and waiting for her to say yes, or a definite no. Skilful tacticians enhance their chances of making out by distributing their attentions among several women at a time (one version of 'playing the field') thus increasing their statistical chances for a favorable answer, depending on circumstances. This is the height of male aggressiveness that is tolerated. Genuine aggressiveness - rape - [men] have forbidden themselves by law.

Hamish Alexander-Harrington knew his wife as only two humans who had both been adopted by a pair of mated treecats ever could. He'd seen her deal with joy and with sorrow, with happiness and with fury, with fear, and even with despair. Yet in all the years since their very first meeting at Yeltsin's Star, he suddenly realized, he had never actually met the woman the newsies called "the Salamander." It wasn't his fault, a corner of his brain told him, because he'd never been in the right place to meet her. Never at the right time. He'd never had the chance to stand by her side as she took a wounded heavy cruiser on an unflinching deathride into the broadside of the battlecruiser waiting to kill it, sailing to her own death, and her crew's, to protect a planet full of strangers while the rich beauty of Hammerwell's "Salute to Spring" spilled from her ship's com system. He hadn't stood beside her on the dew-soaked grass of the Landing City duelling grounds, with a pistol in her hand and vengeance in her heart as she faced the man who'd bought the murder of her first great love. Just as he hadn't stood on the floor of Steadholders' Hall when she faced a man with thirty times her fencing experience across the razor-edged steel of their swords, with the ghosts of Reverend Julius Hanks, the butchered children of Mueller Steading, and her own murdered steaders at her back. But now, as he looked into the unyielding flint of his wife's beloved, almond eyes, he knew he'd met the Salamander at last. And he recognized her as only another warrior could. Yet he also knew in that moment that for all his own imposing record of victory in battle, he was not and never had been her equal. As a tactician and a strategist, yes. Even as a fleet commander. But not as the very embodiment of devastation. Not as the Salamander. Because for all the compassion and gentleness which were so much a part of her, there was something else inside Honor Alexander-Harrington, as well. Something he himself had never had. She'd told him, once, that her own temper frightened her. That she sometimes thought she could have been a monster under the wrong set of circumstances. And now, as he realized he'd finally met the monster, his heart twisted with sympathy and love, for at last he understood what she'd been trying to tell him. Understood why she'd bound it with the chains of duty, and love, of compassion and honor, of pity, because, in a way, she'd been right. Under the wrong circumstances, she could have been the most terrifying person he had ever met. In fact, at this moment, she was . It was a merciless something, her "monster"—something that went far beyond military talent, or skills, or even courage. Those things, he knew without conceit, he, too, possessed in plenty. But not that deeply personal something at the core of her, as unstoppable as Juggernaut, merciless and colder than space itself, that no sane human being would ever willingly rouse. In that instant her husband knew, with an icy shiver which somehow, perversely, only made him love her even more deeply, that as he gazed into those agate-hard eyes, he looked into the gates of Hell itself. And whatever anyone else might think, he knew now that there was no fire in Hell. There was only the handmaiden of death, and ice, and purpose, and a determination which would not— couldnot—relent or rest. "I'll miss them," she told him again, still with that dreadful softness, "but I won't forget. I'll never forget, and one day— oneday, Hamish—we're going to find the people who did this, you and I. And when we do, the only thing I'll ask of God is that He let them live long enough to know who's killing them.

I am not a general or a tactician, but her reasoning is clear. I am the little lightning girl—living electricity, a lightning bolt in human form. People know my name, my face, and my abilities. I am valuable, I am powerful, and Maven will do anything to stop me from striking back.

Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule. A sense of humor enables him to maintain his perspective and see himself for what he really is: a bit of dust that burns for a fleeting second. A sense of humor is incompatible with the complete acceptance of any dogma, any religious, political, or economic prescription for salvation. It synthesizes with curiosity, irreverence, and imagination. The organizer has a personal identity of his own that cannot be lost by absorption or acceptance of any kind of group discipline or organization.

Correction. He’s no idiot. He’s a ruthless tactician who orchestrated the takeover of the House, who knows his members better than they know themselves, who plays a long political game, who never forgets anyone who crosses him, however slight the insult or disrespect, who moves the pieces of the chessboard only after careful deliberation.

Human thought, like every other complex process, is subject to the speed-versus-accuracy trade-off. Go fast, and you make mistakes. Be thorough and diligent, and you take an eternity. We are, as Fiske later called us, motivated tacticians—strategically choosing ease and speed, or effort and accuracy, depending on our motivation. Most of the time, just the gist will do, so we choose speed.

Hannibal excelled as a tactician. No battle in history is a finer sample of tactics than Cannae. But he was yet greater in logistics and strategy. No captain ever marched to and fro among so many armies of troops superior to his own numbers and material as fearlessly and skillfully as he. No man ever held his own so long or so ably against such odds. Constantly overmatched by better soldiers, led by generals always respectable, often of great ability, he yet defied all their efforts to drive him from Italy, for half a generation. …As a soldier, in the countenance he presented to the stoutest of foes and in the constancy he exhibited under the bitterest adversity, Hannibal stands alone and unequaled. As a man, no character in history exhibits a purer life or nobler patriotism.

PC or not, Middle Eastern groups, including Abu Nidal’s, are not tacticians. They walk into nightclubs strapped with explosives, plant car bombs, spray crowded markets with machine-gun fire, and fly hijacked planes full of fuel into buildings. Plain and simple, they’re cowards. They won’t confront anyone on a one-to-one basis. They don’t have the savvy or the courage to do in-your-face operations.

Wars are won by men like Bill Darby, storming up the beach with all guns blazing, and by men like Leverton, sipping his tea as the bombs fell. They are won by planners correctly calculating how many rations and contraceptives an invading force will need; by tacticians laying out grand strategy; by generals inspiring the men they command; by politicians galvanizing the will to fight; and by writers putting war into words. They are won by acts of strength, bravery, and guile. But they are also won by feats of imagination. Amateur, unpublished novelists, the framers of Operation Mincemeat, dreamed up the most unlikely concatenation of events, rendered them believable, and sent them off to war, changing reality through lateral thinking and proving that it is possible to win a battle fought in the mind, from behind a desk, and from beyond the grave. Operation Mincemeat was pure make-believe; and it made Hitler believe something that changed the course of history.

events are apt to be in disgusting discrepancy with the anticipations of the most ingenious tacticians; the difficulties of the expedition are ridiculously at variance with able calculations; the enemy has the impudence not to fall into confusion as had been reasonably expected of him; the mind of the gallant general begins to be distracted by news of intrigues against him at home, and, notwithstanding the handsome compliments he paid to Providence as his undoubted patron before setting out, there seems every probability that the Te Deums will be all on the other side. So

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?

A ninja or shinobi is a mixture of spy, guerrilla tactician, night time infiltration agent, explosives expert, thief and arsonist. The ninja have been named in various ways in many parts of Japan, however, historically they were known as ‘shinobi’ before they became ninja. Both of the names ‘shinobi’ (also shinobi no mono) and ninja come, in the main, from the same combination of Chinese ideograms , which can be read in the two ways described above. It is a misconception that the ninja are a separate force outside of the samurai, as they are in fact a subgroup of the samurai with some members being from the foot soldier or Ashigaru class; this will be discussed in depth later in this volume. A ninja could come from any class in Japan but many were low level samurai retainers.

Augustine's feeling of fragmentation has its modern corollary in the way many contemporary young people are plague by a frantic fear of missing out. The world has provided them with a superabundance of neat things to do. Naturally, they hunger to size every opportunity and taste every experience. They want to grab all the goodies in front of them. They want to say yes to every product in the grocery store. They are terrified of missing out on anything that looks exciting. But by not renouncing any of them they spread themselves thin. What's worse, they turn themselves into goodie seekers, greedy for every experience and exclusively focused on self. If you live in this way, you turn into a shrewd tactician, making a series of cautious semicommitments without really surrendering to some larger purpose. You lose the ability to sau a hundred noes for the sake of one overwhelming and fulfilling yes.

In the sphere of rights the irresistible trend is towards a situation where, if something can be taken for granted, all rights are otiose, whereas if a right must be demanded, it means that the battle is already lost; thus the very call for rights to water, air and space indicates that all these things are already on the way out. Similarly the evocation of a right to reply signals the absence of any dialogue, and so on. The rights of the individual lose their meaning as soon as the individual is no longer an alienated being, deprived of his own being, a stranger to himself, as has long been the case in societies of exploitation and scarcity. In his postmodern avatar, however, the individual is a self-referential and selfoperating unit. Under such circumstances the human-rights system becomes totally inadequate and illusory: the flexible, mobile individual of variable geometric form is no longer a subject with rights but has become, rather, a tactician and promoter of his own existence whose point of reference is not some agency of law but merely the efficiency of his own functioning or performance. Yet it is precisely now that the rights of man are acquiring a worldwide resonance. They constitute the only ideology that is currently available - which is as much as to say that human rights are the zero point of ideology, the sale outstanding balance of history. Human rights and ecology are the two teats of the consensus. The current world charter is that of the New Political Ecology. Ought we to view this apotheosis of human rights as the irresistible rise of stupidity, as a masterpiece which, though imperilled, is liable to light up the coming fin de siecle in the full glare of the consensus?

The trouble with you, M. le comte de Sevigny, is that you’re too god-damned autocratic. From now on, you will kindly remember that a good military tactician requires the support of a team. We are your team.

you turn into a shrewd tactician, making a series of cautious semicommitments without really surrendering to some larger purpose. You lose the ability to say a hundred noes for the sake of one overwhelming and fulfilling yes.

Clark sighed and shook his head at the tedious road ahead. Information, that’s what this whole mess was about. Knowledge truly was power, and men like Ellis understood that Clark could help give them the knowledge they needed to grow their billions and protect their kingdoms. Even over the roar of the surf Clark heard Ellis enter the house. Clark and Ellis shared a thirst for power and that was about it. Where Clark was calm and discerning, Ellis was volatile and brash. The man had a way of wearing people out through frontal assault after frontal assault. Nothing tricky, no feints, he just hammered you into submission. Clark found it all very interesting. He was a true tactician, and often relished outmaneuvering people like Ellis, but tonight, in the warm Caribbean air he would prefer drinks, some light fare and the smooth skin of a young woman flown in from Miami.

When he died, much was made of how singular Steve Jobs had been. For comparisons, observers needed to reach back to the mythic inventors and showmen of earlier eras, particularly Thomas Edison and Walt Disney. Jobs was singular, to be sure. But he also was of a type. He was what psychotherapist and business coach Michael Maccoby called a “productive narcissist.” In 2000, Maccoby published an insightful article in the Harvard Business Review that applies Freudian terminology to three categories of executives Maccoby had observed in corporate life. “Erotics” feel a need to be loved, value consensus, and as a result are not natural leaders. These are the people to whom a manager should assign tasks—and then heap praise for a job well done. “Obsessives” are by-the-books tacticians with a knack for making the trains run on time. An efficient head of logistics or bottom-line-oriented spreadsheet jockey is the classic obsessive. The greats of business history, however, are “productive narcissists,” visionary risk takers with a burning desire to “change the world.” Corporate narcissists are charismatic leaders willing to do whatever it takes to win and who couldn’t give a fig about being liked. Steve Jobs was the textbook example of a productive narcissist. An unimpressed Jobs was famous for calling other companies “bozos.” His own executives endured their rides on what one called the “bozo/hero rollercoaster,” often within the same marathon meeting.

Accountants study math, doctors and nurses study medicine, and weather forecasters study meteorology, so why don't tacticians study tactical science?

Not because he was the strongest, but because he was a clever tactician.

Business success requires business preparation. You don't have to be a master tactician, but you do need to have a plan in place. This plan will act as a foundation for everything you want to achieve.

A tactician does things right. The strategist does the right things.

He had the gift of all great tacticians. He could focus on the smallest detail and never lose sight of the overall picture.

Pervez Musharraf had a formidable ego. He was a Pakistani nationalist but not especially pious. There was no suggestion that he had undergone a religious recommitment like General Mahmud’s. Indeed, there was little evidence that Musharraf sought a unity of the “tactical and moral” in his life; he seemed above all to be a tactician. He had been educated in Catholic schools in Karachi and spent much of his boyhood in secular Turkey. Musharraf had faced expulsion from the army as a young officer because of discipline infractions. He salvaged his career in the Special Services Group, or S.S.G., as a commando. He won a gallantry award during the 1971 war for operating behind Indian lines. As he rose to become a four-star general and lead the army as chief of staff, he did not take advice easily.

By the end of the cold war, the prospect of nuclear winter had clouded every corner of our pop culture and psychology - a pervasive nightmare that the human experiment might be brought to an end by two jousting sets of proud, rivalrist tacticians. Just a few sets of twitchy hands hovering over the planet's self-destruct buttons. The threat of climate change is more dramatic still, and ultimately more democratic, with responsibility shared by each of us even as we shiver in fear of it. And yet we have processed that threat only in parts, typically not concretely or explicitly, displacing certain anxieties and inventing others, choosing to ignore the bleakest features of our possible future and letting our political fatalism and technological faith blur as though we've gone cross-eyed into a remarkably familiar consumer fantasy: that someone else will fix the problem for us - at no cost. Those more panicked are often hardly less complacent, living instead through climate fatalism as though it were climate optimism. Over the last few years, as the planet's own environmental rhythms seem to grow more fatalistic, skeptics have found themselves arguing not that climate change isn't happening, since extreme weather has made that undeniable, but that it's causes are unclear. Suggesting that the changes we are seeing are the result of natural cycles rather than human activities and interventions. It is a very strange argument. If the planet is warming at a terrifying pace and on a horrifying scale it should transparently concern us more, rather than less, that the warming is beyond our control, possibly even our comprehension. That we know global warming is our doing should be a comfort, not a cause for despair, however incomprehensibly large and complicated we find the processes that have brought it into being. That we know we are, ourselves, responsible for all it's punishing effects should be empowering, and not just perversely. Global warming is after all a human invention and the flip-side of our real time guilt is that we remain in command. No matter how out of control the climate system seems; with it's roiling typhones, unprecedented famines and heat waves, refugee crises and climate conflicts; we are all it's authors and still writing. Some, like our oil companies and their political patrons are more prolific authors than others. But the burden of responsibility is too great to be shouldered by a few however comforting it is to think all that is needed is for a few villians to fall. Each of us imposes some suffering on our future selves every time we flip on a light switch, buy a plane ticket, or fail to vote. Now we all share the responsibility to write the next act.

when it comes to changing your behavior, your opponent isn’t facing you across the net. Your opponent is inside your head. Maybe it’s forgetfulness, or a lack of confidence, or laziness, or the tendency to succumb to temptation. Whatever the challenge, the best tacticians size up their opponent and play accordingly.

No matter which role they were in, staffers began to see themselves as tacticians in this made-for-TV blood sport rather than as functionaries in a system that is aimed to produce the best policy outcomes for their fellow citizens.

Maistre is fascinated by the spectacle of war. Consider, he says, a battlefield. People imagine that a battlefield is a place where things happen in a planned manner. The commander gives orders, the troops march into battle, and battles are won or lost in accordance with the preponderance of troops, or the skillful instructions issued by the generals. Nothing could be less true. Consider an actual battle. Once more, do not look at the textbook, look at life: zoology and history are Maistre's masters. If you find a battlefield, what you will encounter upon it is not at all an orderly procession of events matching the descriptions of eye-witnesses, or even of strategists, of tacticians or historians. What you will find is appalling noise, confusion, slaughter, death, ruin, the shrieks of the wounded, the groans of the dying, the violent firing of firearms. 'Five or six kinds of intoxication' people possess upon the field; a general cannot possibly tell whether he is losing the battle or winning it. Nobody can possibly tell this. Wars are not won by rational calculation, they are won by moral force. They are won by people who feel they are winning them. They are won by some kind of irrational inner certainty.

The protection was absolute, but Shen still stepped into the Way and ran from the location. Like a canny tactician luring his enemy into a disadvantageous position. Not like prey running from a hunter. Not at all.

And in life as in warfare, strategists will always prevail over tacticians.

Both officers were extremely experienced in combat, both superb tacticians, and most importantly, I felt, both were consummate team players. With all the tension that would invariably develop as a result of this high-profile mission, I needed someone who could calmly build the joint operational team and not get overpressurized when the stakes got high.

Luther said images were tolerable if they were not worshipped. A cobbler undertook to engage Luther in debate, quoting as "scripture" the sentence "I wish my bride to be naked and do not wish for her to be wearing her gown." Apparently he meant that one should approach God directly without the gown of images, but the absurdity of the "quotation" made Luther put his face in his He quickly changed his mind about the wisdom of a literary debate. When he got back to Wittenberg, he advised the princes to expel Karlstadt from Saxony without delay, and by September 18 Karlstadt was ordered out of the elector's territories. Ronald Sider has summarized the differences between the styles of Luther and Karlstadt. Luther wanted to go slowly; Karlstadt was in a hurry and maintained the activist faith that (in my view) resonates in the great works published by Luther in 1520, that if right doctrines were clearly proclaimed and argued from scripture, preachers could be hold, God would do the rest, and the gospel would take care of itself." In a letter of October 1520 to a friend about the uproar caused by publication of the Babylonian Captivity, Luther wrote confidently of the tumults that must come when the gospel was truly preached.34 That continued to be his opinion at Worms. His attitude in that heady time was clearly to let justice be done though the world fall. But by 1524 Luther was thinking as a tactician; Karlstadt was booming ahead, in expectation not that God would open the skies and do miracles to vindicate him but that God would act through the common folk to make right doctrine prevail. Luther's passion for order was such that he could brook no threat of tumult, and Karlstadt's reliance on the common people was alarming, especially when armed rebellion shouldered its way into German society. Luther could argue for Christian equality in a somewhat abstract form in 1520 when he wrote The Freedom of a Christian and the Babylonian Captivity. In 1524, when it came to flesh-and-blood peasants and other commoners, he changed his mind.

The Persian vizier had outsmarted the British politician.

A fresh volley of copied arrows thundered against the blue Titan barrier. The protection was absolute, but Shen still stepped into the Way and ran from the location. Like a canny tactician luring his enemy into a disadvantageous position. Not like prey running from a hunter. Not at all.

His whole life unraveled the moment she touched him. Fuck, that was a lie. The moment he laid eyes on her was the moment he should have known that he would never be the same again. This woman, this achromo who fought with an undine even knowing what terrible things he could do to her, had captured his heart. He had admired her bravery back then, but he had no way of knowing that bravery would turn into an admiration that eased into love. True, blissful love. He felt better when he was with her. Like his mind stilled and his soul eased. Like he had been searching his entire life for someone who could see him. Just him. Not the warrior. Not the man who could save his people and who was good at attacking the achromos. Not the tactician with the brain who could see through what the achromos built. All she saw was Arges. The monster who had kidnapped her and the creature she had forgiven. They’d fought. They’d argued and drawn blood both ways. And still she found it in her heart to forgive him. How did he deserve a woman like this? How had he found someone who was so fierce and yet so soft at the same time? He was a fool for her.

tactician. He also has a deep understanding of Japanese culture, believing that the nation

Accountants study math, doctors and nurses study medicine, and weather forecasters study meteorology, so why don't tacticians study tactical science? While the problem is pervasive throughout the ranks, it is most acute at the command level. Although a strong emphasis is placed on physical ability and prowess with weapons, the truth is that good tactics have saved more lives than good marksmanship.

I once heard that Lord Martin can recall the exact details of every race he's ever been in and all the mistakes the other skippers made, and he doesn't require a chart or tide table when he's at the wheel. He keeps everything stored in his head like a scientific tactician.

Custer simply did not appreciate the determination of the tribes camped on the banks of the Little Bighorn River. This was not only a battle for their sacred land, but their last chance to protect their way of life. Freedom to roam the plains was being taken from them. They weren’t fighting for something; they were fighting for everything. Sitting Bull was their great chief, which meant he was in charge of the civil affairs, including all negotiations with the United States government, but when the fighting began, Crazy Horse was in command. Crazy Horse was himself a great warrior, a veteran of many indigenous battles, and an excellent tactician. He is credited with devising some of the basic strategies of guerrilla warfare on which special operations are still based. And in his daring and bravery, he was at least the equal of Custer. Both

MObile Tactical Human. We're tacticians, corpsmen, snipers, astronauts and commandos rolled into

During the nineteenth century, corps commander was the highest level of command to still require skills of an operator for success. A corps commander was still able to see a problem develop and to dispatch soldiers or artillery to solve it on the spot. But at the army level of command the dynamics were for the first time different. The army commander was much more distant from the battle and consequently had no ability to act immediately or to control soldiers he could not see. The distance of the army commander from the action slowed responses to orders and created friction such that the commander was obliged to make decisions before the enemy’s actions were observed. Civil War army commanders were now suddenly required to exhibit a different set of skills. For the first time, they had to think in time and to command the formation by inculcating their intent in the minds of subordinates with whom they could not communicate directly. Very few of the generals were able to make the transition from direct to indirect leadership, particularly in the heat of combat. Most were very talented men who simply were never given the opportunity to learn to lead indirectly. Some, like Generals Meade and Burnside, found themselves forced to make the transition in the midst of battle. General Lee succeeded in part because, as military advisor to Jefferson Davis, he had been able to watch the war firsthand and to form his leadership style before he took command. General Grant was particularly fortunate to have the luck of learning his craft in the Western theater, where the press and the politicians were more distant, and their absence allowed him more time to learn from his mistakes. From the battle of Shiloh to that of Vicksburg, Grant as largely left alone to learn the art of indirect leadership through trial and error and periodic failure without getting fired for his mistakes. The implications of this phase of military history for the future development of close-combat leaders are at once simple, and self-evident. As the battlefield of the future expands and the battle becomes more chaotic and complex, the line that divides the indirect leader from the direct leader will continue to shift lower down the levels of command. The circumstances of future wars will demand that much younger and less experienced officers be able to practice indirect command. The space that held two Civil War armies of 200,000 men in 1863 would have been controlled by fewer than 1,000 in Desert Storm, and it may well be only a company or platoon position occupied by fewer than 100 soldiers in a decade or two. This means younger commanders will have to command soldiers they cannot see and make decisions without the senior leader’s hand directly on their shoulders. Distance between all the elements that provide support, such as fires and logistics, will demand that young commanders develop the skill to anticipate and think in time. Tomorrow’s tacticians will have to think at the operational level of war. They will have to make the transition from “doers” to thinkers, from commanders who react to what they see to leaders who anticipate what they will see. To do all this to the exacting standard imposed by future wars, the new leaders must learn the art of commanding by intent very early in their stewardship. The concept of “intent” forms the very essence of decentralized command.

and win the game. Each time we played, I was losing bad but ended up winning on my last turn. Playing the game suddenly gave me a new perspective on surfing. I realized focusing on the big picture was holding me back. I had to concentrate on what I was doing every second and keep in mind that as long as there was time on the clock, I still had a chance. I labored through a few heats before coming to the fourth round. My opponent was the brilliant tactician Barton Lynch. I was still struggling with the mental block I had when competing against Barton, but it was all about to change. At Reunion, the waves were easily double overhead. My objective was to focus on the moment, but at the moment I was losing. It was a long paddle back to the lineup, and I started paying attention to every stroke I took, every breath, and every movement. The title chase became secondary to the here and now. I broke everything down into baby steps—put one arm in front of the other to paddle and didn’t think about anything else. I caught a wave just before the buzzer, knowing I needed a strong ride. Rather than tightening up, I felt completely free.

He saw how the virginal circles of Eudoxus had led to a more coherent astronomy, how the conic sections of Apollonius had prefigured the spirit of universal gravitation. The world had its uses, yes; ideas could be rotated to expedient planes. It wasn’t his method to test the disposition of the physical universe but this didn’t “mean he reacted skeptically to those who drove hooks into nature. He considered the case of Archimedes, son of astronomer, floating body, lever adept, nude runner, catapulter, weigher of parabolas, tactician of solar power, sketcher of equations in sand and with fingernail on own body anointed in after-bath olive oil, killed by dreamless Romans.

Emotionally immature people may seem to be emotional manipulators, but actually they’re just very opportunistic tacticians, pressing for whatever feels best at the time. They have no investment in being consistent, so they say whatever gives them an edge in the moment. They may be capable of strategic thinking in their work or in other pursuits, but when it comes to emotional situations, they go for the immediate advantage. Lying is a perfect example of a momentary win that feels good but is destructive to a relationship in the long run.

David was a unique blending of soldier and shepherd, musician and military tactician, commander and commoner. In spite of his sins and failures—and we all have them—he was Israel’s greatest king, and always will be until King Jesus reigns on David’s throne as Prince of Peace. The next time we’re tempted to emphasize the negative things in David’s life, let’s remember that Jesus wasn’t ashamed to be called “the son of David” (p. 200).

When a ship sinks, the battlefield goes away. Currents move, thermal layers mix, and by the time the surveyors and rescuers arrive, the water that bore witness to the slaughter is nowhere to be found. The dead disappear, carried under with their ruined vehicles. No wreckage remains for tacticians to study. There are no corpses for stretcher-bearers to spirit away, no remains to shovel, bag, and bury. On the sea there is no place to anchor a memorial flagpole or a headstone. It is a vanishing graveyard.

The world owes its first instructional text on communications security to the Greeks. It appeared as an entire chapter in one of the earliest works on military science, On the Defense of Fortified Places, by Aeneas the Tactician.

Tacticians attempt to limit the options of opponents while increasing their own. Increasing one’s options is the result of deeper understanding of the limits and enablers at hand. The boundaries of the battle or campaign limit the span of choices available only to the novice. To the master tactician, the more the boundaries appear to limit choice, the more options become available. The rules become enabling. To be sure, perceived limits and restraints are the source of surprise. When one side believes a thing cannot or will not be done, it is vulnerable to a master tactician who finds a way to do so. Knowledge of the opponent’s perceptions of the boundaries of war increases the options available. When one can find no means to overcome the boundaries of battle, the conflict is lost. Military genius is conferred upon the tactician who can limit the opponent’s options. Victory or defeat comes when one side perceives that the only option left is surrender, the renouncement of the capacity to choose for oneself and the transference of it to the other. This outcome occurs only because structure and context create the corners into which the opponent can be backed.

Stalin was a driving force behind the Korean War. After NATO stonewalled communism in Europe, Stalin turned to Asia. He appointed a “Little Stalin” in North Korea named Kim Il Sung and told him in 1949: “You must strike the Southerners in the teeth….Strike them, strike them.” Soviet tacticians then drew up the battle plans for the North Korean invasion of the south and Kim Il Sung assured Stalin: “The attack will be swift and the war will be won in three days.

The best political tacticians know

villager displaying incredible creativity and insight, with compassion for all life. He shall take up the sword and become not only a Warrior but a surpreme Tactician of highest skill. Although his power comes from within, the Sacred Light shall assist him in the form of Luck. He is a champion of the Overworld.

After the Four Courts bombardment he made his way through the tunnelled buildings to the Gresham Hotel where he found Art O’Connor, de Valera, Robert Barton, Countess Markievicz, Austin Stack, Oscar Traynor and Brugha, ‘all apparently without purpose’.3 The anti-Treaty leaders were courageous, but woefully bad tacticians, disorganised and lacking any overall strategy.

The Germans are excellent soldiers and superb tacticians, but their grasp of strategy, certainly at the geo-political level, is often weak. In threatening British naval supremacy, the Germans drew British attention to their long-term plans, which is the last thing they should have done. As a result, when war loomed in 1914, the British were determined that, whatever else happened, the Germans must not gain naval bases on the French and Belgian coasts, from which they could directly threaten the east coast of England

A master legislative tactician, Madison was now recognized as the first opposition leader in House history and had most of the south lined up solidly behind him.

Ty is a natural leader and a brilliant tactician, but according to his sister, he "wouldn't know fun if it invaded his planet.

He had given Bolshevism strong personal leadership without being a dictator who ruled by arbitrary command. The movement had arisen as his political following in Russian Marxism and developed for twenty years under his guidance and inspiration. Although not institutionalized in an office, his role of supreme leader had entered into the unwritten constitution of Bolshevism, its habitual modus operandi. Lenin had been the movement’s organizer, its chief strategist and tactician, the author of its distinctive version of Marxist ideology, and the authoritative interpreter of party doctrine. He had been the commander-in-chief of the party in the political struggles that led up to the revolutionary conquest of power, and in those that ensued after power was won. He had been the dominant policy-making personality of the ruling party and of the new Third International that came into being under its auspices. His unique authority enabled him to unify an extremely disputatious ruling group whose inner conflicts continually threatened to tear it apart into warring factions. As head of the Soviet government, moreover, Lenin was Bolshevism’s chief executive and director of its foreign relations.

I learnt my first lesson of bureaucracy. “Never be open about your plans with anybody who may oppose you.” Common sense really. Animal cunning is the order of the day, especially when you are a small business mammal avoiding the far larger, carnivorous predator, whether he is a bureaucrat or a big greedy competitor. A good tactician would never consider such an approach. Giving information freely to an adversary was pure stupidity on my part.

Of course we don’t know for sure. But that’s not the point, is it? The point is to anticipate the possible tactical prescience of the enemy, to grant the enemy tacticians the respect that they deserve, and to craft and execute a proper battle plan based on what we know of the battlefield’s topography and the enemy’s mind.

Director Hathaway is the leader of the Accountants, the armed resistance movement fighting the totalitarian regime currently in control of England. The Accountants were named to reflect the fact that their written charter is to bring the coalition government to account for their crimes against the peoples of the British Isles.  “In spite of his lack of any formal military training, Hathaway is credited with being a brilliant natural tactician. Much of his success as a commander has been attributed to his ability to unite the previously divided factions of the resistance behind the central ideas of returning democracy and social equality to Britain, whilst

Worshipping the genius out of vanity. Because we think well of ourselves, but in no way expect that we could ever make the sketch to a painting by Raphael or a scene like one in a play by Shakespeare, we convince ourselves that the ability to do so is quite excessively wonderful, a quite uncommon accident, or, if we still have a religious sensibility, a grace from above. Thus our vanity, our self-love, furthers the worship of the genius, for it does not hurt only if we think of it as very remote from ourselves, as a miracle (even Goethe, who was without envy, called Shakespeare his star of the farthest height, recalling to us that line, "Die Sterne, die begehrt man nicht"—one does not covet the stars).9 But those insinuations of our vanity aside, the activity of the genius seems in no way fundamentally different from the activity of a mechanical inventor, a scholar of astronomy or history, a master tactician. All these activities are explained when one imagines men whose thinking is active in one particular direction; who use everything to that end; who always observe eagerly their inner life and that of other people; who see models, stimulation everywhere; who do not tire of rearranging their material. The genius, too, does nothing other than first learn to place stones, then to build, always seeking material, always forming and reforming it. Every human activity is amazingly complicated, not only that of the genius: but none is a "miracle." From where, then, the belief that there is genius only in the artist, orator, or philosopher? That only they have "intuition" (thus attributing to them a kind of magical eye glass, by which they can see directly into "being")?10 It is evident that men speak of genius only where they find the effects of the great intellect most agreeable and, on the other hand, where they do not want to feel envy. To call someone "divine" means "Here we do not have to compete." Furthermore, everything that is complete and perfect is admired; everything evolving is underestimated. Now, no one can see in an artist's work how it evolved: that is its advantage, for wherever we can see the evolution, we grow somewhat cooler. The complete art of representation wards off all thought of its evolution; it tyrannizes as present perfection. Therefore representative artists especially are credited with genius, but not scientific men. In truth, to esteem the former and underestimate the latter is only a childish use of reason.

but it is precisely Van Meegeren’s badness that gives his story its sting. Van Meegeren was a tireless experimenter, a savvy tactician and dealmaker, and a brilliant psychologist. What he was not especially good at was painting. He found a way to make that not matter.

Hotchkiss was not a scientific gunner, as his straight-ahead, charge-’em-and-to-hell-with-the-consequences manner so aptly demonstrated in Winfrey Field the evening before. Semple, by contrast, was a canny veteran tactician. Close range was fine—if you could get there and deliver accurate fire without getting shot to pieces first—but what Hotchkiss failed to grasp was that artillery was most effective when it delivered a converging fire.