Great things alone can make a great mind, and petty things will make a petty mind unless a man rejects them as completely alien.

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

The deduction of effect from cause is often blocked by some insuperable extrinsic obstacle: the true causes may be quite unknown. Nowhere in life is this so common as in war, where the facts are seldom fully known and the underlying motives even less so.

By 'intelligence' we mean every sort of information about the enemy and his country - the basis, in short, of our own plans and operations.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation form their purposes.

Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates; neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.

War is not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter.