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The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.
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
Plan
Plans
Enemy
Perfect
Dream
Good
More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz
Knowing is different from doing and therefore theory must never be used as norms for a standard, but merely as aids to judgment.
Carl von Clausewitz
We repeat again: strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them. Even with the violence of emotion, judgment and principle must still function like a ship’s compass, which records the slightest variations however rough the sea.
Carl von Clausewitz
Blind aggressiveness would destroy the attack itself, not the defense.
Carl von Clausewitz
Tactics is the art of using troops in battle strategy is the art of using battles to win the war
Carl von Clausewitz
Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.
Carl von Clausewitz
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
The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.
Carl von Clausewitz
A general who allows himself to be decisively defeated in an extended mountain position deserves to be court-martialled.
Carl von Clausewitz
The heart of France lies between Brussels and Paris.
Carl von Clausewitz
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
Knowledge must become capability.
Carl von Clausewitz
Only the element of chance is needed to make war a gamble, and that element is never absent.
Carl von Clausewitz
Self-reliance is the best defence against the pressures of the moment.
Carl von Clausewitz
...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
There are very few men-and they are the exceptions-who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment
Carl von Clausewitz
Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
Carl von Clausewitz
There is only one decisive victory: the last.
Carl von Clausewitz
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
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
Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank.
Carl von Clausewitz
