Target

“ If the target is successful in being able to turn around quickly enough to actually see someone hit him, that someone immediately becomes the new target, and he too must walk up and down the line with head bent until he is able to catch someone in the very act of hitting him. ”

“ Liking the activity in its acquired meaning, they not only "take aim" when they throw instead of throwing at random, but they find or make targets at which to aim. This is the origin and nature of "goals" of action. ”

“ For something in our ordinary actions resembles the little blunted arrows we shoot at targets; little by little we make of our successive deeds an abstract and regular entity that we call our prudence or our will. ”

“ But if generation after generation were shown targets they had had no part in constructing, if bows and arrows were thrust into their hands, and pressure were brought to bear upon them to keep them shooting in season and out, some wearied soul would soon propound to willing listeners the theory that shooting was unnatural, that man was naturally wholly at rest, and that targets existed in order that men might be forced to be active ”

“ How victory may be produced for them out of the enemy’s own tactics—that is what the multitude cannot comprehend.
27. All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
28. Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.
29. Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards. ”

“ True strategy in any tight place, military or civil, is based on a knowledge of human nature, what the enemy will do. That entails the gift of imagination, and there was a touch of it in the disposition going on before my eyes. ”

“ Must we, for their neglect, bear all the blame?
Nay, Master, we have come to love our land!
But see, the task Thou givest us is great;
The load is heavy and the way is long!
Hold Thou our enemy without the gate;
When we have rested then shall we be strong. ”

“ That was my experience on more than one day of adventure when I went wandering with those two friends of mine, whom I have alluded to as the Strategist and the Philosopher. Not all the strategy of the one or the philosophy of the other could save us from unpleasant moments when we blundered close to the lines of an unexpected enemy. ”

“ I was like a man who was in the centre of two lines that meet in war; to such a man this fellow's prose on fighting and that one's verse, this theory of strategy, or that essay upon arms, are not for one moment remembered. ”

“ The motive and the end are with philosophers one and the same thing. For instance; the end for which war is waged is to gain a victory over the enemy; the same victory is the motive or reason which fills the soldier with courage and urges him to venture boldly into the field and to fight bravely. ”

“ I have abstained from controversy, religious, political or historical, for I have tried to live up to my own ideal of a strong position, that it consists far more in proved confidence in your own cause, in the vigilant maintenance of your own defences, in the thorough realisation of your sources of strength and weakness, than in the most adroit use of weapons or the most energetic tactics of aggression. ”

“ All the knowledge that can be obtained of an enemy's designs, must arise from a diligent comparison of one circumstance with another, and from a general view of his force, his interest, and his opportunities. ”

“ A habit of mind is thus formed which is wholly wanting in initiative, and in war the initiative is everything. I agree with you absolutely:—“Make up your mind, and strike! and strike hard and without mercy.” ”

“ The functions of a good general are these: to attack at the proper time and to seize quickly each opportunity for action: to secure the property of the enemy either by force or by an unexpected assault, and to keep safe any possessions already acquired. ”

“ It is present in your own day; it is even dominant then, with a sort of accumulated power and mastery. If you can strike it, you will strike, as it were, into the upper air of your own time, where the forces are which run from age to age. ”

“ These motives are either a desire to be stronger than some other Power, in order to take something from him by force—the aggressive motive; or a desire to be strong enough to prevent some other Power from acting in this way to us—the defensive motive. ”

“ In order to select a line of action for the next period, that is, to map out the strategic plans for action, we have to calculate the surroundings, the relation of forces, the power of resistance of our enemy, the degree of our organization, to calculate the assets of all the fighting forces, to study the social typography of the area. ”

“ Go straight for the goal whenever circumstances permit: but when circumstances are against, follow along the path that offereth the least resistance.
674. Uncompleted work and enemies that are left unsubdued are like unextinguished sparks of fire : they will grow betimes and overwhelm the perfunctory man. ”

“ I have thought it necessary to touch on this normal duty of ours, though - and it may seem strange to say it - I feel at the moment it is even a digression. For the menace of our enemies hangs over us, and the essential immediate purpose is to show the spirit that animates us, and how we face the future. ”

“ Attack, defense; defense, attack, become the circles of the hours and the days that bind the mind in heavy bands of steel with iron overlaid, returning but to start again. There seems to be no break nor ending in the ever-tightening grip of the imprisonment upon the mind. ”

“ The aggressive reaction we associate, or some writers do associate it, with the predatory instinct, practical in its motive, having in part an economic basis. The love of combat which appears especially as a play motive in the child and the youth is expressed as a desire for conquest and in the pleasure of overcoming an enemy. ”

“ But as has been explained in the Lessons, the very material form you have was originally an effort to evolve a force not conquerable by purpose alone. Both good and evil forces, in your phrase—constructive and destructive, in ours—took possession of these concrete forms, and now the bitterness of the fight is greatest where both forces are represented in one individual. The only way we can fight that effectively is to sit on the job, and try to call [168] to the purpose that is ours more clearly and appealingly, or more commandingly, than the other fellow does. ”

“ For all fighting, whether at long range or at close quarters, is very much alike, from schoolboys’ games to the most elaborate military operations; and all the advice of the world may be summed up in the eternal law of attack and defence, which is stated in these four words:—cunning, caution, energy, audacity. ”

“ The true secret of success in this line lies in striking your blow with a weapon picked up on the spot, and in choosing for the scene of your tragedy a thoroughfare where, in the natural course of events, other men will come and go and unconsciously tread out your traces, provided you have made any. ”

“ A recognition of the incentive to solution of the problem, i.e., a realization of the desire or need for attaining a certain effect, an objective (page 36) which will be the maintenance or creation of a favorable military situation, and
(3) An appreciation of this objective in its relationship to the next further result to be accomplished by its attainment.
An understanding of relative fighting strength involves consideration of the means available and opposed, as influenced by the characteristics of the theater of operations. ”

“ At last, the consistent, concerted, co-ordinated effort would be made which, proceeding by investigation, analysis, reason, and experiment, would lead us to the root truths of one weapon after another. ”

“ Let us recall the maxim that the object of all fighting is to produce a state of mind in the adversary, a state of mind conducive to a discontinuance of the struggle and to submission and acquiescence to the will of the victor. ”

“ They had the courage to think out new ideas and to develop them, and then they had the courage to carry through those convictions, not alone against the opposition of the enemy, but against the opposition of their own people, both in the field and at home. ”

“ Inventors of figures and phantoms shall they be in their hostilities; and with those figures and phantoms shall they yet fight with each other the supreme fight!
Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again and again surpass itself! ”

“ The purpose of a resolution to act more wisely and virtuously in future, and the sense of a necessity of caution in repressing an enemy, are the sources from which the enormous superstitions implied in the words cited have arisen. ”

“ You represent a force in modern society; we also represent a force—a new force. Without anger or malice, we have closed in battle. As you will readily discern, we are simply a business proposition. You are the upper, and we the nether, millstone ”

“ But in this actual world of ours, as it is given, a part at least of the activity comes with definite direction; it comes with desire and sense of goal; it comes complicated with resistances which it overcomes or succumbs to, and with the efforts which the feeling of resistance so often provokes; and it is in complex experiences like these that the notions of distinct agents, and of passivity as opposed to activity arise. ”

“ Stratagems are resorted to in war; they are feints and evasions, performed under no disguise; are familiar to commanders; form a part of their plans, and, considered in a military view, lawful and advantageous. The tact with which they are executed exacts admiration from the enemy. ”

“ For that reason, we urge the publication of these truths, that the struggle may no longer be waged in ignorance and doubt and confusion.”
“Does ‘massed forces of destructive purpose’ imply some combination, or co-operation, or co-ordination, among disintegrating forces?” Mary K. was asked, at another time.
[272]
“Yes, they combine every appealing force, as we do. One man may answer to doubt, fear, cupidity, and envy. Another to malice, doubt, and lust. Any forces that can reach him mass themselves in attack and call on their purposes in him to respond.” ”

“ Your weapons are not spears and clubs, but letters. Your means are the quiet and peaceful paths of inquiry. If these paths are often obscured by the foot of time and tangled by the interlacings of history and antiquity, be it yours to put the branches aside, and lead the right way. Truth is your aim, and justice and benevolence your guides. ”

“ All of these thieves of hope suppose that behind our arms there is ambition and self-interested leadership, and that this will determine our path in the future. they are mistaken. Behind our firearms there are other arms—those of reason. ”

“ With what an air of conscious power; of evident mastery of all that might confront them; of calm, unflinching determination for the conflict, those men moved and acted. They felt themselves part of a mighty machine, that had its work before it, and would move with resistless force to perform the appointed task. ”

“ Anybody facing more than one opponent will try to protect his back by a wall, which is also strategy—strategy being the veritable instinct of self-preservation which aims at an advantage in the disposition of forces. ”

“ But among intelligent, firmly rooted beings like ourselves, matters are, of course, on a less crude and direct plane. What among lesser creatures is a question of tactics belongs, for us, to the realm of strategy." Pater's tone grew confiding. ”

“ Tactics and strategy are two activities mutually permeating each other in time and space, at the same time essentially different activities, the inner laws and mutual relations of which cannot be intelligible at all to the mind until a clear conception of the nature of each activity is established. ”

“ The business of the will, then, is to retain the various faculties of our mind in that position where they are really doing the work we wish, and this position may be generalized into the three following attitudes; either we wish to act upon something, or be acted on by it, or to maintain a neutral position; in other words we either intend to project a force, or receive a force or keep a position of inactivity relatively to some particular object. ”

“ The reiteration in the ears, during every minute of the day, of the command to jump into the river, to plunge a convenient knife into the heart, and so on, day in and day out, is calculated to shake the power of control of the strongest-minded. ”

“ In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them; conceal your dispositions, and you will be safe from the prying of the subtlest spies, from the machinations of the wisest brains. ”

“ The agents in this tale, besides men and women, are giants, enchanters, sirens: things which denote external force or internal temptations, the twofold danger which a wise fortitude must expect to encounter in its course through this world. ”

“ Among the complicated doings of the world, the features which I followed—and still continue to follow—with passionate interest were the phases of a battle,—the battle which a new idea, a young movement, had begun to wage with deep-rooted existing phenomena. ”

“ There, was going to be set forth the wonderfully complicated battle-plan, by which, force countervailing force, and design converging all things upon one fixed point, Good, concrete in the creature, should overwhelm not without strife and wounds Evil concrete in the creature, and all things, "even the wicked," should be seen harmoniously blending in the glory of the attributes of God. ”