If you want to learn the craft of war, ponder over this book. The teacher is as a needle, the disciple is as thread. You must practice constantly.
Miyamoto MusashiRead
There is timing in everything. Timing in strategy cannot be mastered without a great deal of practice.
Interpretation
Mastering the timing of actions is essential for effective strategy and requires consistent practice.
This quote by Miyamoto Musashi emphasizes the importance of timing in all endeavors, particularly in strategic contexts. It suggests that one cannot simply rely on intuition or knowledge alone; rather, successful execution and mastery come from dedicated practice and understanding the right moments to act.
In practice
In a speech about strategic planning at a business conference.
If you want to learn the craft of war, ponder over this book. The teacher is as a needle, the disciple is as thread. You must practice constantly.
If you fail to take advantage of your enemies' collapse, they may recover.
One must make the warrior walk his everyday walk.
To cut and slash are two different things. Cutting, whatever form of cutting it is, is decisive, with a resolute spirit. Slashing is nothing more than touching the enemy.
You win battles by knowing the enemy's timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect.
In the void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness.
He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times.
To boast of a performance which I cannot beat is merely stupid vanity. And if I can beat it that means there is nothing special about it. What has passed is already finished with. What I find more interesting is what is still to come.
The sinners to whom Jesus directed His messianic ministry were not those who skipped morning devotions or Sunday church. His ministry was to those whom society considered real sinners. They had done nothing to merit salvation. Yet they opened themselves to the gift that was offered them. On the other hand, the self-righteous placed their trust in the works of the Law and closed their hearts to the message of grace.
A wise person decides slowly but abides by these decisions.
Throw away my book: you must understand that it represents only one of a thousand attitudes. You must find your own. If someone else could have done something as well as you, don’t do it. If someone else could have said something as well as you, don’t say it—or written something as well as you, don’t write it. Grow fond only of that which you can find nowhere but in yourself, and create out of yourself, impatiently or patiently, ah! that most irreplaceable of beings.
The offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet; that I haven’t understood enough; that I can’t know enough; that I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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