To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy's power to frustrate it.

Given the same amount of intelligence, timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity

The object of defense is preservation; and since it is easier to hold ground than to take it, defense is easier than attack. But defense has a passive purpose: preservation; and attack a positive one: conquest.... If defense is the stronger form of war, yet has a negative object, it follows that it should be used only so long as weakness compels, and be abandoned as soon as we are strong enough to pursue a positive object.

The very nature of interactions is bound to make it unpredictable.

Friction is the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper.

If we read history with an open mind, we cannot fail to conclude that, among all the military virtues, the energetic conduct of war has always contributed most to glory and success.

The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.