It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.
Principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference.
Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.
With uncertainty in one scale, courage and self-confidence should be thrown into the other to correct the balance. The greater they are, the greater the margin that can be left for accidents.
The best form of defense is attack.
There is nothing more common than to find considerations of supply affecting the strategic lines of a campaign and a war.
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.