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

General Giap was one of the most brilliant military strategists of our era, who in Dien Bien Phu was able to place missile launchers in remote, mountainous jungles, something the yankee and European military officers considered impossible.

War – An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

I was drafted during the Korean War.

If we turn our backs of the Scythians who have provoked us, how shamefully shall we march against the revolted Bactrians; but if we pass Tanais and make the Scythians feel, by dear experience, that we are invincible, not in Asia only, it is not to be doubted but that Europe itself, as well as Asia, will come within the bounds of our conquests.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

I was 22 when JFK was murdered, and I will never recover from it… Never.

The Spanish Empire eventually collapsed because of its expensive taste for warfare and conquest.

What happened in the missile crisis in October 1962 has been prettified to make it look as if acts of courage and thoughtfulness abounded. The truth is that the whole episode was almost insane.

Pre-emptive war might fall within the framework of international law.

‚Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

Wherever the enemy wants to fight, we will follow him to the ends of the Earth. We’ll adapt, we’ll train, we’ll advise, we’ll mentor, and we’ll fight, and we’ll fight well.

The target of preventive war must have several characteristics. It must be virtually defenceless; it must be important enough to be worth the trouble; it must be possible to portray it as the ultimate evil and an imminent threat to our survival.

To Sun-tzu and the ancient Chinese, doing something extraordinary had little effect without a setup of something ordinary. You had to mix the two – to fix your opponent’s expectations with some banal, ordinary maneuver, a comfortable pattern that they would then expect you to follow.

For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.

Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total… because it may well involve the whole world.

It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated.

An army marches on its stomach.

The nation that secures control of the air will ultimately control the world.

We should develop anti-satellite weapons because we could not have prevailed without them in ‚Red Storm Rising‘.

The great defense against the air menace is to attack the enemy’s aircraft as near as possible to their point of departure.

In 1962, war was avoided by Khrushchev’s willingness to accept Kennedy’s hegemonic demands.

You probably don’t need more weapons than what’s required to destroy every city on earth. There’s only 2,300 cities. So, the United States, by that criteria, only needs 2,300 nuclear weapons – well, we’ve got more than 25,000!

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

When I was researching my book ‚The 33 Strategies of War‘, I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

Notifying the enemy in advance of our withdrawal dates or reassuring the enemy that we will not use certain capabilities like our ground forces should be avoided.

The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.

The events of October 1962 are widely hailed as Kennedy’s finest hour.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

It is true that the king has made a truce with the duke of Burgundy for fifteen days and that the duke is to turn over the city of Paris at the end of fifteen days. Yet you should not marvel if I do not enter that city so quickly.

In modern war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.

You have to make sure you know why you are going to war and then use decisive force to end it as soon as possible.

I want to make pop cool again, and the only way I can do that is by being ambitious and grand.

The atomic bomb certainly is the most powerful of all weapons, but it is conclusively powerful and effective only in the hands of the nation which controls the sky.

Life is warfare.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

I think we would find, if you study the conduct of guerilla-type wars, that the Obama Administration has hit more targets on a broader scale than the Nixon Administration ever did.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

We should not fight wars without a clearly defined end state… when you go to war, it can’t be a half-step.

The Army was always big on Clausewitz, the Prussian; the Navy on Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American; and the Air Force on Giulio Douhet, the Italian. But the Marine Corps has always been more Eastern-oriented. I am much more comfortable with Sun-tzu and his approach to warfare.

Drones are just another weapon, and they turn out to be a very effective weapon that puts no American troops at risk, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t use them against identified enemy targets.

Treachery has existed as long as there’s been warfare, and there’s always been a few people that you couldn’t trust.

When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.

A siege is an act of war.

I think 9/11 affected everybody in one way or another.

Other than being crazy enough to press a button, there is nothing that Putin can do militarily to fundamentally alter American interests.

The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.

Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.

Like the experience of warfare, the endurance of grave or terminal illness involves long periods of tedium and anxiety, punctuated by briefer interludes of stark terror and pain.

During a few days‘ halt near Vesontio for the provision of corn and other supplies, a panic arose from inquiries made by our troops and remarks uttered by Gauls and traders, who affirmed that the Germans were men of a mighty frame and an incredible valour and skill at arms.

Some of the generals are saying, ‚We’re making progress. We are clearing an area.‘ But you really don’t defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.