Dyson-Schwinger equations furnish a Poincare' covariant framework within which to study hadrons. A particular feature is the existence of a nonperturbative, symmetry preserving truncation that enables the proof of exact results. Key to the DSE's efficacious application is their expression of the materially important momentum-dependent dressing of parton propagators at infrared length-scales, which is responsible for the magnitude of constituent-quark masses and the length-scale characterising confinement in bound states. A unified quantitative description of light- and heavy-quark systems is achieved by capitalising on these features.

40 pages, Contribution to proceedings of the International School on Heavy-Quark Physics, Dubna, Moscow Region, 27/May - 1/June, 2002