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.

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

Only great and general battles can produce great results

War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.

The heart of France lies between Brussels and Paris.

The difficulty of accurate recognition constitutes one of the most serious sources of friction in war, by making things appear entirely different from what one had expected.

If we do not learn to regard a war, and the separate campaigns of which it is composed, as a chain of linked engagements each leading to the next, but instead succumb to the idea that the capture of certain geographical points or the seizure of undefended provinces are of value in themselves, we are liable to regard them as windfall profits.