The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.

In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.

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

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

In War more than anywhere else in the world things happen differently to what we had expected, and look differently when near, to what they did at a distance.

War should never be thought of as something autonomous, but always as an instrument of policy.

To discover how much of our resources must be mobilized for war, we must first examine our political aim and that of the enemy. We must gauge the strength and situation of the opposite state. We must gauge the character and abilities of its government and people and do the same in regard to our own. Finally, we must evaluate the political sympathies of other states and the effect the war may have on them.