While hitting one must guard ... In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.

Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.

While there are many causes for which a state goes to war, its fundamental object can be epitomized as that of ensuring the continuance of its policy - in face of the determination of the opposing state to pursue a contrary policy. In the human will lies the source and mainspring of conflict.

For if we merely take what obviously appears the line of least resistance, its obviousness will appeal to the opponent also; and this line may no longer be that of least resistance. In studying the physical aspect, we must never lose sight of the psychological, and only when both are combined is the strategy truly an indirect approach, calculated to dislocate the opponent's balance.

For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.

The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.

The most consistently successful commanders, when faced by an enemy in a position that was strong naturally or materially, have hardly ever tackled it in a direct way. And when, under pressure of circumstances, they have risked a direct attack, the result has commonly been to blot their record with a failure.