Stratagem Quotes - Page 2

• Among the numerous stratagems by which pride endeavors to recommend folly to regard, there is scarcely one that meets with less success than affectation, or a perpetual disguise of the real character by fictitious appearances.

  Samuel Johnson

  Real, Character, Pride

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.131

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• Though fraud in all other actions be odious, yet in matters of war it is laudable and glorious, and he who overcomes his enemies by stratagem is as much to be praised as he who overcomes them by force.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  War, Enemy, Overcoming

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• The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Community, Deception, Rooms

  Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

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• Using the stratagem of defining character by what changes and what remains the same, the one constant always seems to be regret. We are defined by the objects of our regret.

  Stephen Tobolowsky

  Regret, Character, Defining

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• For truth is strong next to the Almighty. She needs no policies or stratagems or licensings to make her victorious. These are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.

  John Milton

  Strong, Errors, Atheism

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• There is nothing that is quite so reassuring in an awkward situation as knowing that one is well turned-out, and while I hope I am not so fainthearted as to require such stratagems, I am not so foolish as to overlook their value.

  Patricia C. Wrede

  Knowing, Awkward, Reassuring

  Patricia C. Wrede, Caroline Stevermer (2014). “The Cecelia and Kate Novels: Sorcery & Cecelia, The Grand Tour, and The Mislaid Magician”, p.278, Open Road Media

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• To read of a detective's daring finesse or ingenious stratagem is a rare joy.

  Rex Stout

  Joy, Detectives, Finesse

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• Those oft are stratagems which errors seem Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.

  Alexander Pope

  Dream, Errors, Seems

  Alexander Pope, William Roscoe (1847). “The works of Alexander Pope, esq., with notes and illustrations, by himself and others. To which are added, a new life of the author, an Estimate of his poetical character and writings, and occasional remarks by William Roscoe, esq”, p.337

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• The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.

  William Shakespeare

  Music, Sweet, Men

  'The Merchant of Venice' (1596-8) act 5, sc. 1, l. 79

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• The Unhappy may, possibly, by indulging Thought, hit on some lucky Stratagem for the Relief of his Misfortunes, and the Happy may be infinitely more so by contemplating on his Condition.

  Eliza Haywood

  Unhappy, Relief, Lucky

  Eliza Haywood (1999). “Selections from The Female Spectator”, p.60, Oxford University Press

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• Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Love, War, Policy

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1855). “The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha: With Illus. by Schoff”, p.245

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• By interpreting freedom as the propagation and immediate gratification of needs, people distort their own nature, for they engender in themselves a multitude of pointless and foolish desires, habits, and incongruous stratagems. Their lives are motivated only by mutual envy, sensuality, and ostentation.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Nature, Freedom, People

  Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ignat Avsey (1998). “The Karamazov Brothers”, p.393, Oxford Paperbacks

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• War is always a struggle in which each contender tries to annihilate the other. Besides using force, they will have recourse to all possible tricks and stratagems to achieve the goal.

  Che Guevara

  War, Struggle, Goal

  Che Guevara (2002). “Guerrilla Warfare”, p.54, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

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• When it shall please God to bring thee to man's estate, use great providence and circumspection in choosing thy wife. For from thence will spring all thy future good or evil; and it is an action of life, like unto a stratagem of war; wherein a man can err but once!

  Philip Sidney

  Spring, War, Men

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• A game of secret, cunning stratagems, in which only the fools who are fated to lose reveal their true aims or motives - even to themselves.

  Eugene O'Neill

  Love, Games, Secret

  Eugene O'Neill (1988). “More Stately Mansions”, p.160, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Stratagem is the right hand of cunning.

  George William Curtis

  Hands, Cunning

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• If you love and serve man, you cannot, by any hiding or stratagem, escape remuneration.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Careers, Hiding

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• There is not a little generalship and stratagem required in the managing and marshalling of our pleasures, so that each shall not mutually encroach to the destruction of all. For pleasures are very voracious, too apt to worry one another, and each, like Aaron's serpent, is prone to swallow up the rest. Thus drinking will soon destroy the power, gaming the means, and sensuality the taste, for other pleasures less seductive, but far more salubrious, and permanent as they are pure.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Drinking, Mean, Worry

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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• The truth may often be carried about by those who themselves remain all unaware of it. They bear that which has weight and substance and yet for them has no name whereby it may be evoked or called forth. They go about ignorant of the true nature of their condition, such are the wiles of truth and such its stratagems.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Truth, Often Is, Names

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy: Picador Classic”, p.433, Pan Macmillan

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• Men who have lost their conviction of what is good and what is bad find themselves without a sextant to check their position by. We are in the position of a man with an elaborate camping kit who finds himself lost in the woods without his matches; to kindle a fire he has to resort to the stratagems of the caveman. We fall back through generations into the oldest terrors and confusions of the race.

  John Dos Passos

  Fall, Men, Fire

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• The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.

  Isaac Asimov

  Way, Rope, Chance

  Isaac Asimov (1991). “Great Tales of the Golden Age of Science Fiction”, Bbs Publishing Corporation

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• Although deceit is detestable in all other things, yet in the conduct of war it is laudable and honorable; and a commander who vanquishes an enemy by stratagem is equally praised with one who gains victory by force.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  War, Enemy, Victory

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2017). “The Prince”, p.216, Knickerbocker Classics

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• Making the logo twice the size is often a good thing to do, because most advertisements are deficient in brand identification. Showing the clients' faces is also a better stratagem than it may sound, because the public is more interested in personalities than in corporations. Some clients can be projected as human symbols of their own products.

  David Ogilvy

  Personality, Sound, May

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

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• It is possible that the meaning of wisdom in Hebrew indicates aptitude for stratagems and the application of thought in such a way that the stratagems and ruses may be used in achieving either rational or moral virtues, or in achieving skill in a practical art, or in working evil and wickedness.

  Maimonides

  Art, Skills, Evil

  Moses Maimonides, Isadore Twersky (1972). “A Maimonides Reader”, p.353, Behrman House, Inc

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• Attempts to limit female mobility by hampering locomotion are ancient and almost universal. The foot-binding of upper-class Chinese girls and the Nigerian custom of loading women's legs with pounds of heavy brass wire are extreme examples, but all over the world similar stratagems have been employed to make sure that once you have caught a woman she cannot run away, and even if she stays around she cannot keep up with you. ... Literally as well as figuratively modern women's shoes are what keeps Samantha from running as fast as Sammy.

  Alison Lurie

  Girl, Running, Class

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