War therefore is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.

Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.

No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy

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

A conqueror is always a lover of peace.

Only great and general battles can produce great results

All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.

War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.

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

Obstinacy is a fault of temperament. Stubbornness and intolerance of contradiction result from a special kind of egotism, which elevates above everything else the pleasure of its autonomous intellect, to which others must bow.

Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war.

Strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them.

Talent and genius operate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with practice.

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.

Action in war is like movement in a resistant element. Just as the simplest and most natural of movements, walking, cannot easily be performed in water, so in war, it is difficult for normal efforts to achieve even moderate results.

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

Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.

Blood is the price of victory

The more a leader is in the habit of demanding from his men, the surer he will be that his demands will be answered.

The object of defense is preservation; and since it is easier to hold ground than to take it, defense is easier than attack. But defense has a passive purpose: preservation; and attack a positive one: conquest…. If defense is the stronger form of war, yet has a negative object, it follows that it should be used only so long as weakness compels, and be abandoned as soon as we are strong enough to pursue a positive object.

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

The more physical the activity, the less the difficulties will be. The more the activity becomes intellectual and turns into motives which exercise a determining influence on the commander’s will, the more the difficulties will increase.

A general in time of war is constantly bombarded by reports both true and false; by errors arising from fear or negligence or hastiness; by disobedience born of right or wrong interpretations, of ill will; of a proper or mistaken sense of duty; of laziness; or of exhaustion; and by accident that nobody could have foreseen. In short, he is exposed to countless impressions, most of them disturbing, few of them encouraging. … If a man were to yield to these pressures, he would never complete an operation.

Where absolute superiority is not attainable, you must produce a relative one at the decisive point by making skillful use ofwhat you have.

Politics is the womb in which war develops.

Whenever armed forces are used, the idea of combat must be present. The end for which a soldier is recruited, clothed, armed, and trained, the whole object of his sleeping, eating, drinking, and marching is simply that he should fight at the right place and the right time.

The Conqueror is always a lover of peace: he would prefer to take over our country unopposed.

Our knowledge of circumstances has increased, but our uncertainty, instead of having diminished, has only increased. The reason of this is, that we do not gain all our experience at once, but by degrees; so our determinations continue to be assailed incessantly by fresh experience; and the mind, if we may use the expression, must always be under arms.

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.

Rather than comparing [war] to art we could more accurately compare it to commerce, which is also a conflict of human interests and activities; and it is still closer to politics, which in turn may be considered as a kind of commerce on a larger scale.

Every age has its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions and its own peculiar preconceptions.

With uncertainty in one scale, courage and self-confidence should be thrown into the other to correct the balance. The greater they are, the greater the margin that can be left for accidents.

There are very few men-and they are the exceptions-who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment

Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.

The best strategy is always to be very strong.

In war, where imperfect intelligence, the threat of a catastrophe, and the number of accidents are incomparably greater than any other human endeavor, the amount of missed opportunities, so to speak, is therefore bound to be greater.

The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.

Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind.

Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.

If you entrench yourself behind strong fortifications, you compel the enemy seek a solution elsewhere.

Principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference.

Given the same amount of intelligence, timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity

The best form of defense is attack.

If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.

The general unreliability of all information presents a special problem in war: all action takes place, so to speak, in the twilight, which, like fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are. Whatever is hidden from full view in this feeble light has to be guessed at by talent, or simply left to chance. So once again for the lack of objective knowledge, one has to trust to talent or to luck.

Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior.

War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.

War is an act of force, and to the application of that force there is no limit. Each of the adversaries forces the hand of the other, and a reciprocal action results which in theory can have no limit.

Knowing is different from doing and therefore theory must never be used as norms for a standard, but merely as aids to judgment.

Responsibility and danger do not tend to free or stimulate the average person’s mind- rather the contrary; but wherever they do liberate an individual’s judgement and confidence we can be sure that we are in the presence of exceptional ability.

Self-reliance is the best defence against the pressures of the moment.

Knowledge must become capability.

In short, absolute, so-called mathematical, factors never find a firm basis in military calculations. From the very start, there is an interplay of possibilities, probabilities, good luck and bad, that weaves its way throughout the length and breadth of the tapestry. In the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.

To discover how much of our resources must be mobilized for war, we must first examine our political aim and that of the enemy. We must gauge the strength and situation of the opposite state. We must gauge the character and abilities of its government and people and do the same in regard to our own. Finally, we must evaluate the political sympathies of other states and the effect the war may have on them.

Criticism exists only to recognize the truth, not to act as judge.

Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind. The difference lies not in the respective natures of savagery and civilization, but in their attendant circumstances, institutions, and so forth. The difference, therefore, does not operate in every sense, but it does in most of them. Even the most civilized peoples, in short, can be fired with passionate hatred for each other.

If the enemy is to be coerced, you must put him in a situation that is even more unpleasant than the sacrifice you call on him to make. The hardships of the situation must not be merely transient – at least not in appearance. Otherwise, the enemy would not give in, but would wait for things to improve.

Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, determined to find a glorious end.

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

The world has a way of undermining complex plans. This is particularly true in fast moving environments. A fast moving environment can evolve more quickly than a complex plan can be adapted to it. By the time you have adapted, the target has changed.

To secure peace is to prepare for war.

Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.