Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination. The bloody solution of the crisis, the effort for the destruction of the enemy’s forces, is the first-born son of war. Only great and general battles can produce great results. Blood is the price of victory.
The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed.
All war presupposes human weakness and seeks to exploit it.
Politics is the womb in which war develops.
All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.
If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.
The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.
War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.
Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.
There are cases in which the greatest daring is the greatest wisdom.
If we read history with an open mind, we cannot fail to conclude that, among all the military virtues, the energetic conduct of war has always contributed most to glory and success.
In war, more than anywhere else in the world, things happen differently from what we had expected, and look differently when near from what they did at a distance.
In war, while everything is simple, even the simplest thing is difficult. Difficulties accumulate and produce frictions which no one can comprehend who has not seen war.
Only great and general battles can produce great results.
The more a general is accustomed to place heavy demands on his soldiers, the more he can depend on their response.
War therefore is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.
A conqueror is always a lover of peace.
Men are always more inclined to pitch their estimate of the enemy’s strength too high than too low, such is human nature.
To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy’s power to frustrate it.