No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by the war and how he intends to conduct it.

Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, determined to find a glorious end.

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

Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.

If we do not learn to regard a war, and the separate campaigns of which it is composed, as a chain of linked engagements each leading to the next, but instead succumb to the idea that the capture of certain geographical points or the seizure of undefended provinces are of value in themselves, we are liable to regard them as windfall profits.

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.

Every age has its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions and its own peculiar preconceptions.