Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds; it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.

War is politics by other means.

Modern wars are seldom fought without hatred between nations; this serves more or less as a substitute for hatred between individuals.

There is nothing more common than to find considerations of supply affecting the strategic lines of a campaign and a war.

Men are always more inclined to pitch their estimate of the enemy's strength too high than too low, such is human nature.

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.

Only the element of chance is needed to make war a gamble, and that element is never absent.