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

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.

As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.

Inflict the least possible permanent injury, for the enemy of to-day is the customer of the morrow and the ally of the future

The more usual reason for adopting a strategy of limited aim is that of awaiting a change in the balance of force ... The essential condition of such a strategy is that the drain on him should be disproportionately greater than on oneself.

If we clear the air of the fog of catchwords which surround the conduct of war, and grasp that in the human will lies the source and mainspring of all conflict, as of all other activities of man's life, it becomes clear that our object in war can only be attained by the subjugation of the opposing will. All acts, such as defeat in the field, propaganda, blockade, diplomacy, or attack on the centres of government and population, are seen to be but means to that end.

The military weapon is but one of the means that serve the purposes of war: one out of the assortment which grand strategy can employ.