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

“...as man under pressure tends to give in to physical and intellectual weakness, only great strength of will can lead to the objective.”

“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.”

“Pity the theory which sets itself in opposition to the mind! It cannot repair this contradiction by any humility, and the humbler it is so much the sooner will ridicule and contempt drive it from real life.”

“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.”

“No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by the war and how he intends to conduct it.”

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