Instruction
Read the quotes below and comment on the leadership lessons. Draw on your education and personal experiences to discuss what the quotes mean to you.
“If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected .”
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John Brown’s Body
Stephen Vincent Benet (from DA Pamphlet 600-65)
“If you take a flat map
And move wooden blocks upon it strategically,
The thing looks well, the blocks behave as they should.
The science of war is moving live men like blocks.
And getting the blocks into place at a fixed moment.
But it takes time to mold your men into blocks
And flat maps turn into country where, creeks and gullies
Hamper your wooden squares. They stick in the brush,
They are tired and rest, they straggle after ripe blackberries
And you cannot lift them up in your hand and move them….
It is all so clear in the maps, so clear in the mind,
But the orders are slow, the men in the blocks are slow
To move, when they start they take too long on the way
The General loses his stars and the block–men die
In unstrategic defiance of martial law
Because still used to just being men, not block parts.”