The unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success.

[The] aim is not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decision, its continuation by a battle is sure to achieve this. In other words, dislocation is the aim of strategy.

The predominance of moral factors in all military decisions. On them constantly turns the issue of war and battle. In the history of war they form the more constant factors, changing only in degree, whereas the physical factors are different in almost every war and every military situation.

With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.

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 unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success.

No man can exactly calculate the capacity of human genius and stupidity, nor the incapacity of will.