 Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating. |
| The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy. |
| Politics is the womb in which war develops. |
| Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination. |
| To secure peace is to prepare for war. |
| A conqueror is always a lover of peace. |
| War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means. |
| War is not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter. |
| 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. |
| War is the continuation of politics by other means. |
| The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation form their purposes. |
| Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior. |
| War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means. |
| Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain. |
| 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 the domain of physical exertion and suffering. |
| I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together. |
| War is the province of danger. |
| 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 regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means. |
