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date: 07 December 2024

Helmuth von Moltke 1800–91
Prussian military commander 

  1. No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main force.
    Kriegsgechichtliche Einzelschriften (1880); often quoted as, ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy’
  2. Strategy is a system of expedients; it is more than a mere scholarly discipline.
    D. J. Hughes (ed.) Moltke on the Art of War (1993) ch. 3
  3. War is a necessary part of God's arrangement of the world…Without war the world would deteriorate into materialism.
    letter to Dr J. K. Bluntschli, 11 December 1880