Top 200 Strategy Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Determine what your customers need, and work backwards.”

— Jeff Bezos

152. “In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.”

— Jack Welch

153. “Strategic thinking rarely occurs spontaneously.”

— Michael Porter

154. “It is a doctrine of war not to assume the enemy will not come, but rather to rely on one’s readiness to meet him; not to presume that he will not attack, but rather to make one’s self invincible.”

— Sun Tzu

155. “So a military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: the ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.”

— Sun Tzu

156. “Till the enemy’s weakness is known, he should be kept on friendly terms.”

— Chanakya

157. “To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.”

— Derek Sivers

158. “Amateurs look for challenges; professionals look for easy trades. Losers get high from the action; the pros look for the best odds.”

— Alexander Elder

159. “Top people have very clear goals. They know who they are and they know what they want. They write it down and they make plans for its accomplishment.”

— Brian Tracy

160. “There is only one decisive victory: the last.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

161. “Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

— Sun Tzu

162. “Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.”

— Sun Tzu

163. “Marketing strategy is a series of integrated actions leading to a sustainable competitive advantage.”

— John Sculley

164. “Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.”

— Jack Welch

165. “Success is 20% skills and 80% strategy.”

— Jim Rohn

166. “Extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.”

— Gary W. Keller

167. “Make time for planning: Wars are won in the general’s tent.”

— Stephen R. Covey

168. “To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”

— Sun Tzu

169. “The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

170. “There is timing in everything. Timing in strategy cannot be mastered without a great deal of practice.”

— Miyamoto Musashi

171. “The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.”

— Henry Ford

172. “Invest in what you know.”

— Peter Lynch

173. “The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.”

— Jeff Bezos

174. “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

175. “The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.”

— Sun Tzu

176. “There are only two sources of competitive advantage: the ability to learn more about our customers faster than the competition and the ability to turn that learning into action faster than the competition.”

— Jack Welch

177. “Decide what it is you want, write it down, review it constantly, and each day do something that moves you toward those goals.”

— Jack Canfield

178. “A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.”

— Steve Blank

179. “Build your own business team. Survival in business requires a synergy of skills.”

— Richard Branson

180. “The best form of defense is attack.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

181. “You win battles by knowing the enemy’s timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect.”

— Miyamoto Musashi

182. “If you don’t have a strategy, you’re part of someone else’s strategy.”

— Alvin Toffler

183. “Do your homework and know your business better than anyone. Otherwise, someone who knows more and works harder will kick your ass.”

— Mark Cuban

184. “Business strategy is the battleplan for a better future.”

— Patrick Dixon

185. “Never invest in a business you can’t understand.”

— Warren Buffett

186. “You can’t look at the competition and say you’re going to do it better. You have to look at the competition and say you’re going to do it differently.”

— Steve Jobs

187. “If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”

— George S. Patton Jr.

188. “What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.”

— Sun Tzu

189. “He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.”

— Napoleon

190. “Everything is based on a simple rule: Quality is the best business plan, period.”

— Steve Jobs

191. “You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

— James C. Collins

192. “The purpose of a business is to create a customer.”

— Peter F. Drucker

193. “It is foolhardy to make a second trade, if your first trade shows you a loss. Never average losses. Let this thought be written indelibly upon your mind.”

— Jesse Lauriston Livermore

194. “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his.”

— George S. Patton Jr.

195. “The clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him.”

— Sun Tzu

196. “Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change. A company that stands still will soon be forgotten. Trying to provoke positive change is a principle we’ve embedded across the Virgin family for more than four decades.”

— Richard Branson

197. “Actually, your past successes are your biggest obstacle: every battle, every war, is different, and you cannot assume that what worked before will work today.”

— Robert Greene

198. “If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.”

— Zig Ziglar

199. “In strategy your spiritual bearing must not be any different from normal. Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm. Meet the situation without tenseness yet not recklessly, your spirit settled yet unbiased.”

— Miyamoto Musashi

200. “Sell the benefit, not your company or the product. People buy results, not features.”

— Jay Abraham