A general who allows himself to be decisively defeated in an extended mountain position deserves to be court-martialled.
In war, where imperfect intelligence, the threat of a catastrophe, and the number of accidents are incomparably greater than any other human endeavor, the amount of missed opportunities, so to speak, is therefore bound to be greater.
Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates; neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.
No other human activity is so continuously or universally bound up with chance. And through the element of chance, guesswork and luck come to play a great part in war.
In the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.
The deduction of effect from cause is often blocked by some insuperable extrinsic obstacle: the true causes may be quite unknown. Nowhere in life is this so common as in war, where the facts are seldom fully known and the underlying motives even less so.
The only situation a commander can know fully is his own: his opponent’s he can know only from unreliable intelligence.
Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.
Boldness will be at a disadvantage only in an encounter with deliberate caution, which may be considered bold in its own right, and is certainly just as powerful and effective; but such cases are rare.
Blood is the price of victory.
War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost limits.
The more a leader is in the habit of demanding from his men, the surer he will be that his demands will be answered.
The heart of France lies between Brussels and Paris.
The world has a way of undermining complex plans. This is particularly true in fast moving environments. A fast moving environment can evolve more quickly than a complex plan can be adapted to it. By the time you have adapted, the target has changed.
The majority of people are timid by nature, and that is why they constantly exaggerate danger. all influences on the military leader, therefore, combine to give him a false impression of his opponent’s strength, and from this arises a new source of indecision.
War is the province of chance. in no other sphere of human activity must such a margin be left for this intruder. it increases the uncertainty of every circumstance and deranges the course of events.
War is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others.
In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.
There is only one decisive victory: the last.
A certain grasp of military affairs is vital for those in charge of general policy.