Bernard Brodie (military strategist)

"It seems to me that the technique of gaming does at least two things, both of which are extremely important. One is that it tends to make a reality out of the potential and also the intentions nominal…"

"Soldiers usually are close students of tactics, but rarely are they students of strategy and practically never of war."

"There is no other science where judgements are tested in blood and answered in the servitude of the defeated, where the acknowledged authority is the leader who has won or who instills confidence that…"

"Clausewitz to be sure, had gone out of his way to point out that armies even when commanded by Napoleon, had rarely defeated opposing armies of as much as twice their size-thus indicating a certain bo…"

"Yet the only empirical data we have about how people conduct war and behave under its stresses is our experience with it in the past, however much we have to make adjustments for subsequent changes in…"

"We will be making a sufficient but necessary contribution if we simply jar the prevalent complacency on the doctrine of shoot-from-the-hip-and-empty-the-magazine."

"Necessity, which frequently exists only in the mind, is less often the mother of invention than of obstinacy, and the obstinacy of those three years exacted from France a penalty which continued to ex…"

"Instances of grave tactical blunders are certainly not lacking in the history of war, but it is characteristic of tactical errors that tend to be self-exposing, if not in relation to some theoretical …"