Strategy Quotes

The issue of a battle is the result of an instant, of a thought. There is the advance, with its various combinations, the battle is joined, the struggle goes on a certain time, the decisive moment presents itself, a spark of genius discloses it, and the smallest body of reserves accomplish victory.

To plan to reserve cavalry for the finish of the battle, is to have no conception of the power of combined infantry and cavalry charges, either for attack or for defense.

War is ninety percent information.

I base my calculation on the expectation that luck will be against me.

Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the later than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never.

Order marches with weighty and measured strides. Disorder is always in a hurry.

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.

There is no man more pusillanimous than I when I am planning a campaign. I purposely exaggerate all the dangers and all the calamities that the circumstances make possible. I am in a thoroughly painful state of agitation. This does not keep me from looking quite serene in front of my entourage; I am like an unmarried girl laboring with child. Once I have made up my mind, everything is forgotten except what leads to success.

The keys of a fortress are always well worth the retirement of the garrison when it is resolved to yield only on those conditions. On this principle it is always wiser to grant an honorable capitulation to a garrison which has made a vigorous resistance than to risk an assault.

Reconnaissance memoranda should always be written in the simplest style and be purely descriptive. They should never stray from their objective by introducing extraneous ideas.

When you have resolved to fight a battle, collect your whole force. Dispense with nothing. A single battalion sometimes decides the day.

We frustrate many designs against us by pretending not to see them.

A plan of campaign should anticipate everything which the enemy can do, and contain within itself the means of thwarting him.

Plans of campaign may be infinitely modified according to the circumstances, the genius of the commander, the quality of the troops and the topography of the theater of war.

The strength of an army, like the momentum in mechanics, is estimated by the weight multiplied by the velocity. A rapid march exerts a beneficial moral influence on the army and increases its means of victory.

An army should have but a single line of operations which it should carefully preserve, and should abandon only when compelled by imperious circumstances.

A military maxim, which ought never to be neglected, is to assemble your cantonments at the point which is most remote and best sheltered from the enemy, especially when he makes his appearance unexpectedly. You will then have time to unite the whole army before he can attack you.

Nothing is more rash or more opposed to the principles of war than a flank march in presence of an army in position, especially when that army occupies heights at the foot of which you must defile.

It is contrary to the usages of war to cause your parks or heavy artillery to enter a defile, the opposite extremity of which is not in your possession; since, in the event of a retreat". they will embarrass you and be lost. They ought to be left in position, under a suitable escort, until yoU have made yourself master of thetermination of the defile.

Infantry, cavalry and artillery cannot dispense with each other. They ought to be quartered in such a manner as always to be able to support each other in case of surprise.