War should never be thought of as something autonomous, but always as an instrument of policy.
Action in war is like movement in a resistant element. Just as the simplest and most natural of movements, walking, cannot easily be performed in water, so in war, it is difficult for normal efforts to achieve even moderate results.
War is politics by other means.
I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.
Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.
Modern wars are seldom fought without hatred between nations; this serves more or less as a substitute for hatred between individuals.
Boldness governed by superior intellect is the mark of a hero.
Great things alone can make a great mind, and petty things will make a petty mind unless a man rejects them as completely alien.
Given the same amount of intelligence, timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity.
No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy.
It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition.
Timidity is the root of prudence in the majority of men.
Where absolute superiority is not attainable, you must produce a relative one at the decisive point by making skillful use of what you have.
What we should admire is the acute fulfillment of the unspoken assumptions, the smooth harmony of the whole activity, which only become evident in the final success.
In War, the young soldier is very apt to regard unusual fatigues as the consquence of faults, mistakes, and embarrassment in the conduct of the whole, and to become distressed and depondent as a consequence. This would not happen if he had been prepared for this beforehand by exercises in peace.
Every combat is the bloody and destructive measuring of the strength of forces, physical and moral; whoever at the close has the greatest amount of both left is the conqueror.
Knowledge must become capability.
War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.
In war more than anywhere else, things do not turn out as we expect.
The side that feels the lesser urge for peace will naturally get the better bargain.