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

The more physical the activity, the less the difficulties will be. The more the activity becomes intellectual and turns into motives which exercise a determining influence on the commander's will, the more the difficulties will increase.

War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.

Whoever does great things with small means has successfully reached the goal.

Knowing is different from doing and therefore theory must never be used as norms for a standard, but merely as aids to judgment.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation form their purposes.

The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing practical to alter or deflect the impulse to destroy the enemy, which is central to the very idea of war.