The Backbone Of Surprise Is Fusing Speed

No Other Human Activity Is So Continuously Or Universally Bound Up With Chance. And Through The Element Of Chance, Guesswork And Luck Come To Play A Great Part In War.

There Are Very Few Men-and They Are The Exceptions-who Are Able To Think And Feel Beyond The Present Moment

If We Consider The Actual Basis Of This Information [i.e., Intelligence], How Unreliable And Transient It Is, We Soon Realize That War Is A Flimsy Structure That Can Easily Collapse And Bury Us In Its Ruins. ... Many Intelligence Reports In War Are Contradictory; Even More Are False, And Most Are Uncertain. This Is True Of All Intelligence But Even More So In The Heat Of Battle, Where Such Reports Tend To Contradict And Cancel Each Other Out. In Short, Most Intelligence Is False, And The Effect Of Fear Is To Multiply Lies And Inaccuracies.

No One Starts A War--or Rather, No One In His Sense Ought To Do So--without First Being Clear In His Mind What He Intends To Achieve By The War And How He Intends To Conduct It.

War Is The Province Of Chance. In No Sphere Of Human Activity Is Such A Margin To Be Left For This Intruder. It Increases The Uncertainty Of Every Circumstance, And Deranges The Course Of Events.