“War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.”

To foster the people’s willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power.

In the case of a state that is seeking not conquest but the maintenance of its security, the aim is fulfilled if the threat is removed – if the enemy is led to abandon his purpose.

The unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success.

The practical value of history is to throw the film of the past through the material projector of the present on to the screen of the future.

If you find your opponent in a strong position costly to force, you should leave him a line of retreat as the quickest way of loosening his resistance. It should, equally, be a principle of policy, especially in war, to provide your opponent with a ladder by which he can climb down.

It is only to clear from history that states rarely keep faith with each other, save in so far (and so long) as their promises seem to them to combine with their interests.

[The] aim is not so much to seek battle as to seek a strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decision, its continuation by a battle is sure to achieve this. In other words, dislocation is the aim of strategy.

Natural hazards, however formidable, are inherently less dangerous and less uncertain than fighting hazards. All conditions are more calculable, all obstacles more surmountable than those of human resistance.

The most effective indirect approach is one that lures or startles the opponent into a false move – so that, as in ju-jitsu, his own effort is turned into the lever of his overthrow.

As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.

The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.

The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.

Air forces offered the possibility of striking a the enemy’s economic and moral centres without having first to achieve ‘the destruction of the enemy’s main forces on the battlefield’. Air-power might attain a direct end by indirect means – hopping over opposition instead of overthrowing it.

While hitting one must guard … In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.

For the spread and endurance of an idea the originator is dependent on the self-development of the receivers and transmitters.

In reality, it si more fruitful to wound than to kill. While the dead man lies still, counting only one man less, the wounded man is a progressive drain upon his side.

We don’t thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient.

Pacifists become militants. Freedom fighters become tyrants. Blessings become curses. Help becomes hindrance. More becomes less.

If you want to serve the country, you recognize it’s rough and tumble. And it’s nothing like serving your country in the military.

We’ve got to strengthen our military long-term. We don’t know what the world is going to throw at us down the road.

I believe that there is a greater power in the world than the evil power of military force, of nuclear bombs — there is the power of good, of morality, of humanitarianism.

A soldier of fortune with twisted tongue will come to pillage the sanctuary of the gods; To the heretics he will open the gate, thus stirring up the Church militant.

After I was discharged from the military, it was difficult trying to become a civilian.

One was to be a cowboy and another was to be in the military. I grew up extremely patriotic and riding horses.