One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority.

A commander in chief ought to say to himself several times a day: If the enemy should appear on my front, on my right, on my left, what would I do? And if the question finds him uncertain, he is not well placed, he is not as he should be, and he should remedy it.

Let France have good mothers, and she will have good sons.

Life is strewn with so many dangers, and can be the source of so many misfortunes, that death is not the greatest of them.

A leader is a dealer in hope.

I would rather have a general who was lucky than one who was good.

What is the future? What is the past? What are we? What is the magic fluid that surrounds us and conceals the things we most need to know? We live and die in the midst of marvels.