In war, the chief incalculable is the human will.
The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.
If you want peace, understand war.
The downfall of civilized states tends to come not from the direct assaults of foes, but from internal decay combined with the consequences of exhaustion in war.
The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.
The most effective indirect approach is one that lures or startles the opponent into a false move – so that, as in ju-jitsu, his own effort is turned into the lever of his overthrow.
A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.
To foster the people’s willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power.
The easiest and quickest path into the esteem of traditional military authorities is by the appeal to the eye, rather than to the mind. The ‘polish and pipeclay’ school is not yet extinct, and it is easier for the mediocre intelligence to become an authority on buttons, than on tactics.
Ensure that both plan and dispositions are flexible, adaptable to circumstances. Your plan should foresee and provide for a next step in case of success or failure.
In strategy, the longest way round is often the shortest way there – a direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, whereas an indirect approach loosens the defender’s hold by upsetting his balance.
A modern state is such a complex and interdependent fabric that it offers a target highly sensitive to a sudden and overwhelming blow from the air.
Air Power is, above all, a psychological weapon – and only short-sighted soldiers, too battle-minded, underrate the importance of psychological factors in war.
The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.
For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.