War therefore is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.

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

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.

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

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 is only caused through the political intercourse of governments and nations - war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of other means.

Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war.