A certain grasp of military affairs is vital for those in charge of general policy.
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.
[...] to introduce into the philosophy of war itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity
In War more than anywhere else in the world things happen differently to what we had expected, and look differently when near, to what they did at a distance.
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.
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.
Of all the passions that inspire a man in a battle, none, we have to admit, is so powerful and so constant as the longing for honor and reknown.
If we read history with an open mind, we cannot fail to conclude that, among all the military virtues, the energetic conduct of war has always contributed most to glory and success.
This tremendous friction which cannot, as in mechanics, be reduced to a few points, is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings about effects that cannot be measured just because they are largely due to chance.
Politics is the womb in which war develops - where its outlines already exist in their hidden rudimentary form, like the characteristics of living creatures in their embryos.
All war presupposes human weakness and seeks to exploit it.
Only the element of chance is needed to make war a gamble, and that element is never absent.
War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.
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.
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.
...as man under pressure tends to give in to physical and intellectual weakness, only great strength of will can lead to the objective.
If you entrench yourself behind strong fortifications, you compel the enemy seek a solution elsewhere.
Lastly, the great uncertainty of all data in War is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not unfrequently — like the effect of a fog or moonshine — gives to things exaggerated dimensions and an unnatural appearance.
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.
Architects and painters know precisely what they are about as long as they deal with material phenomena.... But when they come to the aesthetics of their work, when they aim at a particular effect on the mind or on the senses, the rules dissolve into nothing but vague ideas.
War is merely a continuation of politics.
Battles decide everything.
Just as some plants bear fruit only if they don't shoot up too high, so in practical arts the leaves and flowers of theory must be pruned and the plant kept close to its proper soil- experience.
No other human activity is so continuously or universally bound up with chance. And through the element of chance, guesswork and luck come to play a great part in war.
Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates; neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.
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