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The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.

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
Witty
Humorous
Speed
Surprise
Powerful
Fusing
Backbone
Secrecy

More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz

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Tactics is the art of using troops in battle strategy is the art of using battles to win the war
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Politics is the womb in which war develops.
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Modern wars are seldom fought without hatred between nations this serves more or less as a substitute for hatred between individuals.
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Only the element of chance is needed to make war a gamble, and that element is never absent.
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A certain grasp of military affairs is vital for those in charge of general policy.
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Blood is the price of victory
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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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing practical to alter or deflect the impulse to destroy the enemy, which is central to the very idea of war.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.
Carl von Clausewitz
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The best strategy is always to be very strong.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.
Carl von Clausewitz
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We shall not enter into any of the abstruse definitions of war used by publicists. We shall keep to the element of the thing itself, to a duel. War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale.
Carl von Clausewitz
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War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
Carl von Clausewitz
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With uncertainty in one scale, courage and self-confidence should be thrown into the other to correct the balance. The greater they are, the greater the margin that can be left for accidents.
Carl von Clausewitz
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The heart of France lies between Brussels and Paris.
Carl von Clausewitz
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In 1793 such a force as no one had any conception of made its appearance. War had again suddenly become an affair of the people, and that of a people numbering thirty millions, every one of whom regarded himself as a citizen of the State... By this participation of the people in the war... a whole Nation with its natural weight came into the scale.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Blind aggressiveness would destroy the attack itself, not the defense.
Carl von Clausewitz
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In War, the young soldier is very apt to regard unusual fatigues as the consquence of faults, mistakes, and embarrassment in the conduct of the whole, and to become distressed and depondent as a consequence. This would not happen if he had been prepared for this beforehand by exercises in peace.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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.
Carl von Clausewitz