However much pains may be taken to combine the soldier and the citizen in one and the same individual, whatever may be done to nationalize wars, never will it be possible to do away with the professionalism of the business; and if that cannot be done, then those who belong to it will always look upon themselves as a kind of guild, in the regulations, laws, and customs in which the "Spirit of War" finds its expression. It would be very wrong to look down upon this corporate spirit, or esprit de corps, which may and should exist more or less in every Army.

The bloody solution of the crisis, the effort for the destruction of the enemy's forces, is the first-born son of war.

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

Whenever armed forces . . . are used, the idea of combat must be present. . . . The end for which a soldier is recruited, clothed, armed, and trained, the whole object of his sleeping, eating, drinking, and marching is simply that he should fight at the right place and the right time.

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

The only situation a commander can know fully is his own: his opponent's he can know only from unreliable intelligence.

There is only one decisive victory: the last.