16 quotes
There is but one means to extenuate the effects of enemy fire: it is to develop a more violent fire oneself.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
Everything in war is linked together, is mutually interdependent, mutually interpenetrating.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
In tactics, action is the governing rule of war.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
The military art is not an accomplishment, an art for dilettante, a sport.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
Every manoeuvre must be the development of a scheme; it must aim at a goal.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
To inform, and, therefore to reconnoitre, this is the first and constant duty of the advanced guard.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
The unknown is the governing condition of war.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
A war not only arises, but derives its nature, from the political ideas, the moral sentiments, and the international relations obtaining at the moment when it breaks out.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
An army is to a chief what a sword is to a soldier. It is only worth anything in so far as it receives from him a certain impulsion (direction and vigour).
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
The laurels of victory are at the point of the enemy bayonets. They must be plucked there; they must be carried by a hand-to-hand fight if one really means to conquer.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
Against what should fire be opened? Against the obstacles which may delay the march of infantry.
The first obstacle is the enemy gun. It will be the first objective assigned to artillery masses.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
The truth is, no study is possible on the battle-field; one does there simply what one can in order to apply what one knows. Therefore, in order to do even a little, one has already to know a great deal and to know it well.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
In war there are none but particular cases; everything has there an individual nature; nothing ever repeats itself.
In the first place, the data of a military problem are but seldom certain; they are never final. Everything is in a constant state of change and reshaping.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
Far from being a sum of distinct and partial results, victory is the consequence of efforts, some of which are victorious while others appear to be fruitless, which nevertheless all aim at a common goal, all drive at a common result: namely, at a decision, a conclusion which alone can provide victory.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
The distribution of troops devoted to the defence of a place includes a garrison, an occupying force, numerically as weak as possible; a reserve as strong as possible, designed for counterattacking and for providing itself, at the moment it goes into action, with a security service which will guard it from any possible surprise.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)
This absence of similarity among military questions naturally brings out the inability of memory to solve them; also the sterility of invariable forms, such as figures, geometrical drawings (épures), plans (schémas), etc. One only right solution imposes itself : namely, the application, varying according to circumstances, of fixed principles.
Precepts and Judgments (1919)