Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.
There are very few men-and they are the exceptions-who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment.
Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, determined to find a glorious end.
Every age has its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions and its own peculiar preconceptions.
Knowing is different from doing and therefore theory must never be used as norms for a standard, but merely as aids to judgment.
The best strategy is always to be very strong.
Whoever does great things with small means has successfully reached the goal.
War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.
If you entrench yourself behind strong fortifications, you compel the enemy to seek a solution elsewhere.
The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.
Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
The great uncertainty of all data in war is because all action is, to a certain extent, planned in a mere twilight – like the effect of a fog – giving things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance.
Knowledge in war is very simple, being concerned with so few subjects, and only with their final results at that. But this does not make its application easy.
Only the element of chance is needed to make war a gamble, and that element is never absent.
Where execution is dominant, as it is in the individual events of a war whether great or small, then intellectual factors are reduced to a minimum.
Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank.
Of all the passions that inspire a man in a battle, none, we have to admit, is so powerful and so constant as the longing for honor and reknown.
Criticism exists only to recognize the truth, not to act as judge.
Obstinacy is a fault of temperament. Stubbornness and intolerance of contradiction result from a special kind of egotism, which elevates above everything else the pleasure of its autonomous intellect, to which others must bow.
Intelligence alone is not courage, we often see that the most intelligent people are irresolute. Since in the rush of events a man is governed by feelings rather than by thought, the intellect needs to arouse the quality of courage, which then supports and sustains it in action.