I have noticed in every campaign that I have fought-that there is a key segment of time, somewhere between 13 and 15 minutes in which the battle is won or lost. I focus on that segment of time, and I win.

Without cavalry, battles are without result.

I treat policies like war. I hoodwink one flank so as to trounce the other. In my family we kneel only to God.

You must not fear death, my lads; defy him, and you drive him into the enemy's ranks.

To write history one must be more than a man, since the author who holds the pen of this great justiciary must be free from all preoccupation of interest or vanity.

This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog. Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.

You don't govern men who don't have religion, you shoot them.