Nothing short of self-respect and that justice which is essential to a national character ought to involve us in war.

I have spent my life in the study of military strength as a deterrent to war, and in the character of military armaments necessary to win a war... We are rapidly getting to the point that no war can be won.

If you wage war, do it energetically and with severity. This is the only way to make it shorter, and consequently less inhuman.

It is an approved maxim in war, never to do what the enemy wishes you to do, for this reason alone, that he desires it.

The art of war consists in being always able, even with an inferior army, to have stronger forces than the enemy at the point of attack or the point which is attacked.

War is becoming an anachronism; if we have battled in every part of the continent it was because two opposing social orders were facing each other, the one which dates from 1789, and the old regime. They could not exist together; the younger devoured the other. I know very well, that, in the final reckoning, it was war that overthrew me, me the representative of the French Revolution, and the instrument of its principles. But no matter! The battle was lost for civilization, and civilization will inevitably take its revenge.