Timidity Is The Root Of Prudence In

After We Have Thought Out Everything Carefully In Advance And Have Sought And Found Without Prejudice The Most Plausible Plan, We Must Not Be Ready To Abandon It At The Slightest Provocation. Should This Certainty Be Lacking, We Must Tell Ourselves That Nothing Is Accomplished In Warfare Without Daring; That The Nature Of War Certainly Does Not Let Us See At All Times Where We Are Going; That What Is Probable Will Always Be Probable Though At The Moment It May Not Seem So; And Finally, That We Cannot Be Readily Ruined By A Single Error, If We Have Made Reasonable Preparations.

War Should Never Be Thought Of As Something Autonomous, But Always As An Instrument Of Policy.

War Is An Act Of Force, And To The Application Of That Force There Is No Limit. Each Of The Adversaries Forces The Hand Of The Other, And A Reciprocal Action Results Which In Theory Can Have No Limit.

Timidity Is The Root Of Prudence In The Majority Of Men.

The Deduction Of Effect From Cause Is Often Blocked By Some Insuperable Extrinsic Obstacle: The True Causes May Be Quite Unknown. Nowhere In Life Is This So Common As In War, Where The Facts Are Seldom Fully Known And The Underlying Motives Even Less So.