Natural hazards, however formidable, are inherently less dangerous and less uncertain than fighting hazards. All conditions are more calculable, all obstacles more surmountable than those of human resistance.

Ensure that both plan and dispositions are flexible, adaptable to circumstances. Your plan should foresee and provide for a next step in case of success or failure.

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

The nearer the cutting off point lies to the main force of the enemy, the more immediate the effect; whereas the closer to the strategic base it takes place, the greater the effect.

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

To foster the people's willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power.

It is thus more potent, as well as more economical, to disarm the enemy than to attempt his destruction by hard fighting ... A strategist should think in terms of paralysing, not of killing.