"Carefully compare the opposing army with your own, so that you may know where strength is superabundant and where it is deficient."
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War quotes
War
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War quotes (page 75 of 853)
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"So the important thing in a military operation is victory, not persistence."
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"The end and aim of spying in all its five varieties is knowledge of the enemy; and this knowledge can only be derived, in the first instance, from the converted spy. Hence it is essential that the converted spy be treated with the utmost liberality."
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"Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity."
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"The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy."
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"Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity; They cannot be properly managed without benevolence and straightforwardness; Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make certain of the truth of their reports; Be subtle! be subtle! and use your spies for every kind of warfare; If a secret piece of news is divulged by a spy before the time is ripe, he must be put to death together with the man to whom the secret was told."
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"All war is deception."
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"On both difficult and easy terrain, you must know the 'tenable' and 'fatal' ground. Occupy tenable ground and attack on fatal ground."
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"There aren't a lot of opportunities for that rite of passage that makes you a man. War is one of them, and violent sports are another."
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"The sinister nature of the American soil is apparent in places like Gettysburg. Fertilize it with the blood of heros, and it brings forth a frozen-custard stand."
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"What thrust us into war were not Hitler's political teachings: the cause, this time, was his successful attempt to establish a new economy. The causes of the war were: envy, greed, and fear."
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"Men soon get tired of shedding their blood for the advantage of a few individuals, who think they amply reward the soldiers perils with the treasures they amass."
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"I have fought sixty battles, and I have learnt nothing which I did not know at the beginning."
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"A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything."
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"The first quality of a soldier is constancy in enduring fatigue and hardship. Courage is only the second. Poverty privation and want are the school of the good soldier."
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"War justifies everything."
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"I appeal for cessation of hostilities, not because you are too exhausted to fight, but because war is bad in essence. You want to kill Nazism. You will never kill it by its indifferent adoption."
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"The war on drugs is wrong, both tactically and morally. It assumes that people are too stupid, too reckless, and too irresponsible to decide whether and under what conditions to consume drugs. The war on drugs is morally bankrupt."
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"Prudence approaches, conscience accuses."
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"I don't feel a lack of hope. It's just disappointment that after all these years we're still fighting meaningless wars for a handful of people."
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