Martin Van Creveld Quotes & Sayings

“The enemy resembles us. Therefore, he needs to be approached not as an assembly of 'targets' to be destroyed one by one; but as a living, intelligent entity capable of acting and reacting.”

“If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot.”

“As history since Hiroshima shows, the best, perhaps the only, way to curb war is to deter it with such overwhelming force as to turn it from a struggle into suicide.”

“'Never' is too much of a word. Nothing lasts forever.”

“If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent, then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see, there is simply no escape.”

“Except when war is waged in a desert, noncombatants, also known as civilians or 'the people,' constitute the great majority of those affected.”

“In the future as in the past, both Clausewitz and Sun Tzu will undoubtedly have a lot to offer.”

“If you are strong, and you are fighting the weak for any period of time, you are going to become weak yourself. If you behave like a coward, then you are going to become cowardly - it's only a question of time.”

“I want to put any number of assorted 'ists' - such as relativists, deconstructionists, destructivists, postmodernists, the more maudlin kind of pacifists and feminists - firmly in their place.”

“The defense of the West Bank by Arab forces would be a truly suicidal enterprise. The late King Hussein understood these facts well. Until 1967, he was careful to keep most of his forces east of the Jordan River. When he momentarily forgot these realities in 1967, it took Israel just three days of fighting to remind him of them.”