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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.

Carl von Clausewitz

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Carl von Clausewitz
Age: 51 †
Born: 1780
Born: June 1
Died: 1831
Died: November 16
Historian
Military Historian
Military Officer
Military Personnel
Military Theorist
Philosopher
Writer
Burg bei Magdeburg
Faint
Light
Lead
Indispensable
Truth
Follow
Qualities
May
Courage
Firsts
Second
Wherever
First
Quality
Leads
Even
Hours
Intellect
Retains
Inspirational
Inner
Darkest
Two
Hour

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Men are always more inclined to pitch their estimate of the enemy's strength too high than too low, such is human nature.
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War is an act of force, and to the application of that force there is no limit. Each of the adversaries forces the hand of the other, and a reciprocal action results which in theory can have no limit.
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Boldness will be at a disadvantage only in an encounter with deliberate caution, which may be considered bold in its own right, and is certainly just as powerful and effective but such cases are rare.
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Politics is the womb in which war develops - where its outlines already exist in their hidden rudimentary form, like the characteristics of living creatures in their embryos.
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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.
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The more a general is accustomed to place heavy demands on his soldiers, the more he can depend on their response.
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There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom.
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Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.
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Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.
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The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.
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To achieve victory we must mass our forces at the hub of all power & movement. The enemy's 'Center of Gravity'
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Battles decide everything.
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Knowledge must become capability.
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A general who allows himself to be decisively defeated in an extended mountain position deserves to be court-martialled.
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Intelligence alone is not courage, we often see that the most intelligent people are irresolute. Since in the rush of events a man is governed by feelings rather than by thought, the intellect needs to arouse the quality of courage, which then supports and sustains it in action.
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The heart of France lies between Brussels and Paris.
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If we do not learn to regard a war, and the separate campaigns of which it is composed, as a chain of linked engagements each leading to the next, but instead succumb to the idea that the capture of certain geographical points or the seizure of undefended provinces are of value in themselves, we are liable to regard them as windfall profits.
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Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank.
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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.
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Action in war is like movement in a resistant element. Just as the simplest and most natural of movements, walking, cannot easily be performed in water, so in war, it is difficult for normal efforts to achieve even moderate results.
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