Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.

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.

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

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

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 continuation of politics by other means.

A conqueror is always a lover of peace.

To secure peace is to prepare for war.

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

Politics is the womb in which war develops.

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.

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