Only Great And General Battles Can Produce

[the Cause Of Inaction In War] ... Is The Imperfection Of Human Perception And Judgment Which Is More Pronounced In War Than Anywhere Else. We Hardly Know Accurately Our Own Situation At Any Particular Moment While The Enemy's, Which Is Concealed From Us, Must Be Deduced From Very Little Evidence.

War Is...a Trinity Of Violence, Chance, And Reason.

Pursue One Great Decisive Aim With Force And Determination.

Every Combat Is The Bloody And Destructive Measuring Of The Strength Of Forces, Physical And Moral; Whoever At The Close Has The Greatest Amount Of Both Left Is The Conqueror.

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.