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War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.

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
War
Utmost
Pushed
Bounds
Limits
Violence
Peace

More quotes by 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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Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, determined to find a glorious end.
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Der Krieg ist nichts als eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs mit Einmischung anderer Mittel. War is merely the continuation of policy with the admixture of other means.
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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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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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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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The more a general is accustomed to place heavy demands on his soldiers, the more he can depend on their response.
Carl von Clausewitz
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The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.
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All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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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To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy's power to frustrate it.
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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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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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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
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Politics is the womb in which war develops.
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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A conqueror is always a lover of peace.
Carl von Clausewitz
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In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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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Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
Carl von Clausewitz