War is the province of danger.

Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.

Every combat is the bloody and destructive measuring of the strength of forces, physical and moral; whoever at the close has the greatest amount of both left is the conqueror.

The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.

Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind.

In war more than anywhere else, things do not turn out as we expect.

In 1793 such a force as no one had any conception of made its appearance. War had again suddenly become an affair of the people, and that of a people numbering thirty millions, every one of whom regarded himself as a citizen of the State... By this participation of the people in the war... a whole Nation with its natural weight came into the scale.