Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.

Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.

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

Where execution is dominant, as it is in the individual events of a war whether great or small, then intellectual factors are reduced to a minimum.

[The cause of inaction in war] ... is the imperfection of human perception and judgment which is more pronounced in war than anywhere else. We hardly know accurately our own situation at any particular moment while the enemy's, which is concealed from us, must be deduced from very little evidence.

War is merely a continuation of politics.

With uncertainty in one scale, courage and self-confidence should be thrown into the other to correct the balance. The greater they are, the greater the margin that can be left for accidents.