"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."
Moltke's thesis was that military strategy had to be understood as a system of options, since it was possible to plan only the beginning of a military operation. As a result, he considered the main task of military leaders to consist in the extensive preparation of all possible outcomes.[3] His thesis can be summed up by two statements, one famous and one less so, translated into English as "No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main strength" (or "no plan survives contact with the enemy") and "Strategy is a system of expedients".[18][8] Right before the Austro-Prussian War, Moltke was promoted to General of the Infantry.[8]
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RecursionI heard it in this form.
Apropos of Eisenhower, there is an incredible (fiction) book by Larry Collins, called Fall from Grace. It is about a brilliant long term plan and actions by British and French secret services to deceive the Germans about where the final Allied invasion would happen on the shores of France near the end of WWII. According to the novel, the ruse helped win the war.
Interwoven with a doomed romance.
https://www.google.com/search?q=fall+from+grace+larry+collin...
I read the full book some years ago, and it was gripping, though slow in parts.
Let's juxtapose them and see:
Von Moltke:
"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."
Tyson:
"Everybody has a plan until you get hit in the face."
Pretty much the same meaning, and Von Moltke's quote is three words shorter, so no, Tyson's quote is not simpler.
Also, Tyson was ungrammatical, IMO:
"Everybody" vs. "you" in the same sentence, referring to the same entity.
Grammar experts, correct me if I am wrong.
> Also, Tyson was ungrammatical, IMO:
> "Everybody" vs. "you" in the same sentence, referring to the same entity.
Seems perfectly understandable to English speakers. (And that's pretty close to how English grammar is defined by descriptive linguists.)
Have a look at http://fine.me.uk/Emonds/ for an exploration of these kinds of concepts.
"Everybody" seems to be in the third person and "you" is in the second person, so I thought it was a mismatch (since in the same sentence, etc.), and so was ungrammatical.
Let anyone tell me if I am wrong, would like to know.
And see my reply to sbuk, it was just in fun.
The mechanical rules are just an imperfect attempt at capturing parts of the richness of real world language, or more precisely: language variants of different dialects and speakers.
Of course, there's a whole world of class markers overlaid here as well. If you want to sound middle-class educated in most of the English speaking world, you have to avoid "ain't" and say things like "It is I" or "Bob and I went shopping.", instead of the more natural "It's me!" or "Bob and me went shopping." That's what Emond calls 'Grammatically Deviant Prestige Constructions'. The whole point is that they aren't part of a naturally learnable variant of English, so they can only be acquired by schooling.
Most people who speak prestige-English over-generalise, and also say things like "She likes Bob and I.".
See fine.me.uk/Emonds/ for details.
Nope. Not important to me.
I was just being a little pedantic for fun. I don't do that often.
So peace and order was not even disturbed, at least for me.
Enjoy.
I googled it and at least the top few links don't seem relevant.
My question was in reply to the comment above by sbuk, excerpted below:
>It was midnight and a few beers after celebrating a birthday. I'm sorry I offended your grammatical sensibilities. But you really did go full orange site there, didn't you!