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Unhappy the general who comes on the field of battle with a system.
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In war, three-quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter.
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If you wage war, do it energetically and with severity. This is the only way to make it shorter and consequently less inhuman.
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Whatever you ardently and passionately desire, that you obtain.
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Reprisals are but a sad resource.
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Sometimes a great example is necessary to all the public functionaries of the state.
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Here, Gentlemen, a dog teaches us a lesson in humanity.
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A general-in-chief should ask himself several times in the day, What if the enemy were to appear now in my front, or on my right, or my left?
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Lead the ideas of your time and they will accompany and support you; fall behind them and they drag you along with them; oppose them and they will overwhelm you.
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I start out by believing the worst.
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Tragedy warms the soul, elevates the heart, can and ought to create heroes. In this sense, perhaps, France owes a part of her great actions to Corneille.
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To imagine that it is possible to perform great military deeds without fighting is just empty dreams.
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Much shedding of blood, many great actions, and triumphs, toil and perseverance are the end of all things human.
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The great art of governing consists in not letting men grow old in their jobs.
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Men who have changed the world never achieved their success by winning the chief citizens to their side, but always by stirring the masses.
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A true master of politics is able to calculate, down to the smallest fraction, the advantages to which he may put his very faults.
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In statesmanship there are predicaments from which it is impossible to escape without some wrongdoing.
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Ordinarily men exercise their memory much more than their judgment.
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Champagne! In victory, one deserves it; in defeat one needs it.
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What luck, for governments, that the people are stupid!
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It should not be believed that a march of three or four days in the wrong direction can be corrected by a countermarch. As a rule, this is to make two mistakes instead of one.
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Occupation is the scythe of time.
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Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.
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In war, men are nothing, one man is everything.