The side that feels the lesser urge for peace will naturally get the better bargain.

It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.

The only situation a commander can know fully is his own: his opponent's he can know only from unreliable intelligence.

War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.

Great things alone can make a great mind, and petty things will make a petty mind unless a man rejects them as completely alien.

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

However much pains may be taken to combine the soldier and the citizen in one and the same individual, whatever may be done to nationalize wars, never will it be possible to do away with the professionalism of the business; and if that cannot be done, then those who belong to it will always look upon themselves as a kind of guild, in the regulations, laws, and customs in which the "Spirit of War" finds its expression. It would be very wrong to look down upon this corporate spirit, or esprit de corps, which may and should exist more or less in every Army.