War Quotes

War is ninety percent information.

The battle of Austerlitz is the grandest of all I have fought.

When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes.

To have ultimate victory, you must be ruthless.

In war, the moral is to the physical as ten to one.

Victory is not always winning the battle...but rising every time you fall.

You have won battles without cannon, crossed rivers without bridges, made forced marches without shoes, camped without brandy and often without bread. Soldiers of liberty, only republican phalanxes [infantry troops] could have endured what you have endured.

God is on the side with the best artillery.

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

The corpse of an enemy always smells sweet.

Sometimes a single battle decides everything and sometimes, too, the slightest circumstance decides the issue of a battle. There is a moment in every battle at which the least manoeuvre is decisive and gives superiority, as one drop of water causes overflow.

The secret of war lies in the communications.

That man [Sir Sydney Smith] made me miss my destiny.

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.

In war, three-quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter.

Nothing is so important in war as an undivided command.

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.

Even when I am gone, I shall remain in people's minds the star of their rights, my name will be the war cry of their efforts, the motto of their hopes.

If I were an Englishman, I should esteem the man who advised a war with China to be the greatest living enemy of my country. You would be beaten in the end, and perhaps a revolution in India would follow.