The more a leader is in the habit of demanding from his men, the surer he will be that his demands will be answered.

War is politics by other means.

No other human activity is so continuously or universally bound up with chance. And through the element of chance, guesswork and luck come to play a great part in war.

Timidity is the root of prudence in the majority of men.

The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing practical to alter or deflect the impulse to destroy the enemy, which is central to the very idea of war.

A general who allows himself to be decisively defeated in an extended mountain position deserves to be court-martialled.

Knowing is different from doing and therefore theory must never be used as norms for a standard, but merely as aids to judgment.