It is simply not true that war is solely a means to an end, nor do people necessarily fight in order to obtain this objective or that. In fact, the opposite is true: people very often take up one objective or another precisely in order that they may fight.

— Martin van Creveld

Martin van Creveld Quotes

War is the greatest fun man can have with his pants on.

— Martin van Creveld

Fun

Obviously, we don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons and I don’t know if they’re developing them, but if they’re not developing them, they’re crazy.

— Martin van Creveld

Assuming China does not become destabilized and continues to grow, it will no doubt develop a military program in proportion to its resources.

— Martin van Creveld

Thus knowing oneself is no less, and may be more, of a requirement than understanding the enemy.

— Martin van Creveld

Though hand-to-hand combat has become rare, much modern warfare continues to involve physical strain such as those who have not engaged in it can scarcely imagine.

— Martin van Creveld

There is equality before God and there is equality here on earth. There is natural equality and there is the kind of equality that human society creates.

— Martin van Creveld

As so often in history, equality for some can only be achieved by discriminating against all the rest.

— Martin van Creveld

According to Clausewitz, the purpose of studying war was to provide commanders with a sound basis for their thinking and render it unnecessary to reinvent the wheel with every new situation.

— Martin van Creveld

However much some people may resent the fact, in nature inequality and not equality seems to be the rule.

— Martin van Creveld

Accordingly, the Chinese texts regard war not as an instrument for the attainment of this end or that but as the product of stern necessity, something which must be confronted and coped with and managed and brought to an end. Clausewitz emphasizes that war is brutal and bloody and seeks to achieve a great victory. By contrast, the Chinese texts are permeated by a humanitarian approach and have as their aim the restoration of dao.

— Martin van Creveld

Inequality, in other words, is precisely the principle upon which their social life is based and is made possible.

— Martin van Creveld

Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby the Scrivener.

— Martin van Creveld

In the early 1990s, for example, 300 million people lived in countries where men’s life expectancy was higher than that of women. Today, the number is practically zero.

— Martin van Creveld

In The Prince he says that “a just war is a necessary war,” thus cutting through the Gordian knot formed by endless Medieval discussions of Just War from Saint Augustine to Saint Thomas Aquinas.

— Martin van Creveld

Men’s lot in life is endless hard work whose fruits will be consumed largely by others. The more men bring in, the greater the demands. Should men fail, they may lose both what they made and those to whom they gave it. Perhaps the most terrifying thing about Melville’s story is that, at times, Bartleby’s behavior and fate can tempt even the most active and successful man.

— Martin van Creveld

A closer examination of the facts would have shown that hordes of perfectly free men and women enjoying equal authority, status and access to resources of every kind, including each other’s sexuality, have never existed and probably could not have existed. To paraphrase Hobbes, perfect equality, like its concomitant perfect liberty, can only exist when each individual lives alone in a desert, where it is meaningless.

— Martin van Creveld

As a result, from 1945 on general works which tried to come to grips with the nature of war very often devoted a separate chapter to guerrilla warfare. They almost treated it as if it stood in no relation to anything else.

— Martin van Creveld

However, by 1990, at the latest, the Clausewitzian framework was beginning to show serious cracks. As has just been said, it proved incapable of incorporating warfare by, or against, non-state actors.

— Martin van Creveld

The way Lind sees it, the only Western commander who ever mastered third-generation warfare was George Patton. All others remained stuck in second-generation warfare, a blunt, clumsy instrument that had long outlived its usefulness and only worked because of the overwhelming advantage in firepower they enjoyed over Germany.

— Martin van Creveld

The first is extreme flexibility which will enable one to take advantage of fleeting opportunities. Said Sun Tzu, “an army is like water which adapts itself to the configuration of the ground.

— Martin van Creveld

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