In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace, and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

The sufferings and impoverishment of peoples might arrest their warfare, the collapse of the defeated might still the cannonade, but their hatreds continue unappeased and their quarrels are still unsettled.

War never pays its dividends in cash on the money it costs.

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.