Quotes from book

On War

“Where execution is dominant, as it is in the individual events of a war whether great or small, then intellectual factors are reduced to a minimum.”

“If the mind is to emerge unscathed from this relentless struggle with the unforeseen, 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.”

“…the side that feels the lesser urge for peace will naturally get the better bargain.”

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

“…an intellectual instinct which extracts the essence from the phenomena of life, as a bee sucks honey from a flower. In addition to study and reflections, life itself serves as a source.”

“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.”

“Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates; neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.”

“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.”

“What we should admire is the acute fulfillment of the unspoken assumptions, the smooth harmony of the whole activity, which only become evident in the final success.”

“…only the element of chance is needed to make war a gamble, and that element is never absent.”

“…in the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.”

“A prince or general can best demonstrate his genius by managing a campaign exactly to suit his objectives and his resources, doing neither too much nor too little.”

“Knowledge must be so absorbed into the mind that it ceases to exist in a separate, objective way.”

“…talent and genius operate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with practice.”

“Knowledge in war is very simple, being concerned with so few subjects, and only with their final results at that. But this does not make its application easy.”

“Men are always more inclined to pitch their estimate of the enemy's strength too high than too low, such is human nature.”

“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.”

“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.”

“…soldierly simplicity of character that has always represented the military at its best. In the higher ranks it is different. The higher a man is placed, the broader his point of view. Different interests and a wide variety of passions, good and bad, will arise on all sides. Envy and generosity, pride and humility, wrath and compassion - all may appear as effective forces in this great drama.”