The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.
As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.
The implied threat of using nuclear weapons to curb guerrillas was as absurd as to talk of using a sledge hammer to ward off a swarm of mosquitoes.
While the nominal strength of a country is represented by its numbers and resources, this muscular development is dependent on the state of its internal organs and nerve-system – upon its stability of control, morale, and supply.
In reality, it si more fruitful to wound than to kill. While the dead man lies still, counting only one man less, the wounded man is a progressive drain upon his side.
With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.
I used to think that the causes of war were predominantly economic. I came to think that they were more psychological. I am now coming to think that they are decisively “personal,” arising from the defects and ambitions of those who have the power to influence the currents of nations.
Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.
This high proportion of history’s decisive campaigns, the significance of which is enhanced by the comparative rarity of the direct approach, enforces the conclusion that the indirect is by far the most hopeful and economic form of strategy.
Guerrilla war is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many.
To ensure attaining an objective, one should have alternate objectives. An attack that converges on one point should threaten, and be able to diverge against another. Only by this flexibility of aim can strategy be attuned to the uncertainty of war.
Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.
Loyalty is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and decency.
If you wish for peace, understand war.
Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save his face. Put yourself in his shoes – so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil – nothing is so self-blinding.
The historian’s rightful task is to distil experience as a medicinal warning for the future generations, not to distil a drug.
The vital influences are to be detected not in the formal documents compiled by rulers, ministers, and generals but in their marginal notes and verbal asides. Here are revealed their instinctive prejudices, lack of interest in truth for its own sake, and indifference to the exactness of statement and reception which is a safeguard against dangerous misunderstanding. I.
We must face the fact that international relations are governed by interests and not by moral principles.
Bismarck’s aphorism throws a different and more encouraging light on the problem. It helps us to realize that there are two forms of practical experience, direct and indirect and that, of the two, indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider.
Water shapes its course according to the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.
The enigma of history,” thus we have styled him, though the title “Father of German unity,” or again, “Father of grand strategy,” would have been equally just – that is, if we can associate so homely a word as “father” with that cold unemotional mind, so utterly detached from the instincts and prejudices of normal humanity, soaring to a purely intellectual atmosphere too rarified for ordinary minds to breathe.