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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
May
Courage
Qualities
Firsts
Second
Wherever
First
Quality
Leads
Even
Hours
Intellect
Inspirational
Inner
Retains
Two
Hour
Darkest
Light
Lead
Faint
Truth
Follow
Indispensable

More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz

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War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.
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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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War is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others.
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Only great and general battles can produce great results
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Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
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Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
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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.
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War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
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Blind aggressiveness would destroy the attack itself, not the defense.
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In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.
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Architects and painters know precisely what they are about as long as they deal with material phenomena.... But when they come to the aesthetics of their work, when they aim at a particular effect on the mind or on the senses, the rules dissolve into nothing but vague ideas.
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Politics is the womb in which war develops.
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In war, while everything is simple, even the simplest thing is difficult. Difficulties accumulate and produce frictions which no one can comprehend who has not seen war.
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Responsibility and danger do not tend to free or stimulate the average person's mind- rather the contrary but wherever they do liberate an individual's judgement and confidence we can be sure that we are in the presence of exceptional ability.
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...as man under pressure tends to give in to physical and intellectual weakness, only great strength of will can lead to the objective.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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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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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Just as some plants bear fruit only if they don't shoot up too high, so in practical arts the leaves and flowers of theory must be pruned and the plant kept close to its proper soil- experience.
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Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war.
Carl von Clausewitz