Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.

Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

War is the province of danger.

Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.

If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.

To secure peace is to prepare for war.

All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.

Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.

A conqueror is always a lover of peace.

Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior.

Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.

It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.

Principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference.

Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation form their purposes.

The more a general is accustomed to place heavy demands on his soldiers, the more he can depend on their response.

Politics is the womb in which war develops.

War is not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter.

The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.

By Rice's own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a war president the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one?

Before and during the first phase of the war his administration repeatedly maligned the UN but now, that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, it is asking the UN for help.

What the war did was give me the opportunity of three years of continuous reading, and it was in the course of reading that I became convinced that I should become an economist.

Most fathers don't see the war within the daughter, her struggles with conflicting images of the idealized and flawed father, her temptation both to retreat to Daddy's lap and protection and to push out of his embrace to that of beau and the world beyond home.

In war there is no prize for runner-up.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

No one will deny that the excessive use of alcohol and alcoholic beverages would do more than any other single factor to make impossible a total war effort.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

We were succeeding. When you looked at specifics, this became a war of attrition. We were winning.

Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.

Hair is also a problem. I remember once, when I was reporting from Beirut at the height of the civil war, someone wrote in to the BBC complaining about my appearance.

War, in some instances, especially defensive, has been authorized by Heaven.

There are not fifty ways of fighting, there's only one, and that's to win. Neither revolution nor war consists in doing what one pleases.

Especially today as we fight the war on terror - against an enemy that represents hatred, extremism and stands behind no flag - we need to remember the sacrifices that have gone into protecting our flag.

The seasons come up undisturbed by crime and war.

I was told my son was killed in the war on terror. He was killed by George Bush's war of terror on the world.

Fascism is a worldwide disease. Its greatest threat to the United States will come after the war, either via Latin America or within the United States itself.

The real peril of war lies not in military defeat. It lies in war itself, whether we win or lose.

We in this Congress have a choice. The American people have a right to exercise a choice on this issue, as to whether our men and women will continue to fight and die in a war based on deception and fantasy, or to start bringing the troops home.

War is just one more big government program.

In a war, you must hate somebody or love somebody; you must have a position or you cannot stand what goes on.

For a war correspondent to miss an invasion is like refusing a date with Lana Turner.

It is obvious that taking the country from a state of war to being a lawful state won't be easy.