War should never be thought of as something autonomous, but always as an instrument of policy.

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.

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

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.

War is...a trinity of violence, chance, and reason.

War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.

The majority of people are timid by nature, and that is why they constantly exaggerate danger. all influences on the military leader, therefore, combine to give him a false impression of his opponent's strength, and from this arises a new source of indecision.