Blood Is The Price Of Victory

In War, While Everything Is Simple, Even The Simplest Thing Is Difficult. Difficulties Accumulate And Produce Frictions Which No One Can Comprehend Who Has Not Seen War.

Knowledge In War Is Very Simple, Being Concerned With So Few Subjects, And Only With Their Final Results At That. But This Does Not Make Its Application Easy.

Obstinacy Is A Fault Of Temperament. Stubbornness And Intolerance Of Contradiction Result From A Special Kind Of Egotism, Which Elevates Above Everything Else The Pleasure Of Its Autonomous Intellect, To Which Others Must Bow.

Our Knowledge Of Circumstances Has Increased, But Our Uncertainty, Instead Of Having Diminished, Has Only Increased. The Reason Of This Is, That We Do Not Gain All Our Experience At Once, But By Degrees; So Our Determinations Continue To Be Assailed Incessantly By Fresh Experience; And The Mind, If We May Use The Expression, Must Always Be Under Arms.

If We Do Not Learn To Regard A War, And The Separate Campaigns Of Which It Is Composed, As A Chain Of Linked Engagements Each Leading To The Next, But Instead Succumb To The Idea That The Capture Of Certain Geographical Points Or The Seizure Of Undefended Provinces Are Of Value In Themselves, We Are Liable To Regard Them As Windfall Profits.