60 Strategy Quotes From Business and Military Leaders You Can Use to Make a Life Strategy

These strategy quotes from business moguls like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates explain why strategy is important for anyone trying to grow a business.

They point out things like having a strategy regarding your products, your bottom line, and your vision for the future.

It seems like there is a strategy for everything in life in today’s world.

There is strategic planning for businesses, military strategy, and even strategies for life!

But before understanding what all these individual strategies mean, it is important to understand what strategy itself means.

We define strategy as a long-term action plan or policy designed to achieve a major goal or overall aim.

Military operations are another area where it is important to have a strategy.

You do not want to engage in the battle without some kind of advanced plan.

Military leaders like Sun Tzu spent a lifetime learning and speaking about strategy.

Strategy is also an important part of winning in sports.

Even chess players use a strategy when playing the game.

Let these strategy quotes inspire you to develop a winning plan for whatever goal you want to achieve in life.

Don’t forget to also check out these business motivational quotes about massive success.

Check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily inspiration. 

Our inspirational quotes category page has all our motivational quotes for all the different areas of life.

Smart Strategy quotes from Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

1. “Strategy is figuring out what not to do.” ― Steve Jobs

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2. “Manage the top line: your strategy, your people, and your products, and the bottom line will follow.” ― Steve Jobs

3. “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do: we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” ― Steve Jobs

4. “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” ― Steve Jobs

5. “You know, I’ve got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can’t say any more than that it’s the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me.” ― Steve Jobs

6. “Every new change forces all the companies in an industry to adapt their strategies to that change.” ― Bill Gates

7. “A bad strategy will fail no matter how good your information is. And lame execution will stymie a good strategy. If you do enough things poorly, you’ll go out of business.” ― Bill Gates

8. “Only a few businesses will succeed by having the lowest price, so most will need a strategy that includes customer services.” ― Bill Gates

9. “Leaders need to provide strategy and direction and to give employees tools that enable them to gather information and insight from around the world. Leaders shouldn’t try to make every decision.” ― Bill Gates

Strategy quotes from Michael Porter

10. “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” ― Michael Porter

11. “Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.” ― Michael Porter

12. “There’s a fundamental distinction between strategy and operational effectiveness.” ―Michael Porter

13. “Strategy 101 is about choices: You can’t be all things to all people.” ― Michael Porter

14. “Sound strategy starts with having the right goal.” ― Michael Porter

15. “The best CEOs I know are teachers, and at the core of what they teach is strategy.” ― Michael Porter

16. “The company without a strategy is willing to try anything.” ― Michael Porter

Strategy quotes about sports and other activities

17. “The game of football is one of strategy and tactics.” ― Woody Hayes

18. “Success doesn’t necessarily come from breakthrough innovation, but from flawless execution. A great strategy alone won’t win a game or a battle; the win comes from basic blocking and tackling.” ― Naveen Jain

19. “In boxing you create a strategy to beat each new opponent, it’s just like chess.” ― Lennox Lewis

20. “Baseball is about talent, hard work, and strategy. But at the deepest level, it’s about love, integrity, and respect.” ― Pat Gillick

21. “Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It’s part ballet. It’s part battleground, part playground.” ― Steve Sabol

22. “Fighting is about a strategy. MMA is not all about brutality.” ― Royce Gracie

23. “In every fight, the strategy is to baptize and take their soul – that’s always the strategy.” ― Jorge Masvidal

24. “The correct strategy in heads-up poker is based on identifying and acting upon your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses.” ― Daniel Negreanu

Business strategy quotes from important business people and authors

25. “What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tailwind is now a headwind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.” ― Jeff Bezos

26. “The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” ― Mark Zuckerberg

27. “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” ― Michael LeBoeuf

28. “Creative without strategy is called ‘art.’ Creative with strategy is called ‘advertising.’” ― Jef I. Richards

29. “Globalization means that business strategy and business ethics cannot be separated from each other.” ― Ofra Strauss

30. “Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there.” ― John P. Kotter

31. “Strategy requires thought, tactics require observation.” ― Max Euwe

32. “Don’t give up. Obstacles can be overcome through strategy and learning.” ― Hidetaka Miyazaki

33. “The entrance strategy is actually more important than the exit strategy.” ― Edward Lampert

34. “Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.” ― Miyamoto Musashi

35. “Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.” ― Anita Brookner

36. “I believe that people make their own luck by great preparation and good strategy.” ― Jack Canfield

37. “You build your own strategy. You don’t define it by what another competitor is doing.” ― Ginni Rometty

38. “My basic strategy is to stick to my core business and to my area of expertise.” ― Henry Sy

Strategy quotes from military professionals, philosophers, politicians, and lawyers

39. “All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” ― Sun Tzu

40. “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.” ― Norman Schwarzkopf

41. “There’s only one growth strategy: work hard.” ― William Hague

42. “Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.” ― Sun Tzu

43. “Change is not a destination, just as hope is not a strategy.” ― Rudy Giuliani

44. “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ― Sun Tzu

Funny strategy quotes to remind you it’s not all serious business

45. “Strategy is buying a bottle of fine wine when you take a lady out for dinner. Tactics is getting her to drink it.” ― Frank Muir

46. “Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.” ― Susan Sontag

47. “You may not be interested in strategy, but strategy is interested in you.” ― Leon Trotsky

48. “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” ― Winston Churchill

49. “This strategy represents our policy for all time. Until it’s changed.” ― Marlin Fitzwater

50. “Strategy and culture should have breakfast together.” ― Max McKeown

Strategy Quotes To Make You Commit To Your Plans

51. “We finally are where we need to be. We have a strategy and a commitment to go after ISIS.” ― Hillary Clinton

52. “The peak efficiency of knowledge and strategy is to make conflict unnecessary.” ― Sun Tzu

53. “Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the later than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte

54. “God employs different strategies for different places or purposes.” ― Rick Joyner

55. “The best strategy relies upon an unlimited set of responses.” ― Morihei Ueshiba

56. “Hope is not strategy. Hope fits with vision, but we must have a strategy and a process to make our vision become a reality.” ― John C. Maxwell

57. “I do not believe that a counterterrorism strategy all by itself, without a sufficient level of counterinsurgency, will work.” ― Rahm Emanuel

58. “Devise a simple strategy so you can sleep at night.” ― Walter Schloss

59. “The process of developing superior strategies is part planning, part trail and error, until you hit upon something that works.” ― Constantinos C. Markides

60. “Minimizing exposure to miserable people is nothing short of a life strategy.” ― Carolyn Hax

What did you learn from these strategy quotes?

Understanding what strategy is is only half the battle.

Developing and implementing a strategy is not always an effortless task, but here are a few tips to help you out!

First, it’s important to understand your current challenge.

Ask yourself why or how you are in the position you are.

In business, you want to make sure you understand the company’s mission and values.

This is an important tool for life too, so if you haven’t created a personal mission or value statement, give that a try.

Then make sure your personal strategy aligns with the things that are important to you.

Another tool used to develop business strategy is a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats).

Analyzing these four things will help you create the strongest strategy possible.

A SWOT analysis is another business tool that can have a large impact on your life when you create a personal one because it allows you the chance to be honest with yourself and aware of the things that might hold you back from achieving your dreams.

What’s your biggest takeaway from these strategy quotes and sayings?

What are your goals, and do you have a strategy to reach them?

Be sure to check out the other articles on the site about goal setting and chasing your dreams, so you can craft a strategy for living your best life.