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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
Peace
War
Utmost
Pushed
Bounds
Limits
Violence
More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz
Modern wars are seldom fought without hatred between nations this serves more or less as a substitute for hatred between individuals.
Carl von Clausewitz
The difficulty of accurate recognition constitutes one of the most serious sources of friction in war, by making things appear entirely different from what one had expected.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.
Carl von Clausewitz
The very nature of interactions is bound to make it unpredictable.
Carl von Clausewitz
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
Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.
Carl von Clausewitz
In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.
Carl von Clausewitz
There is only one decisive victory: the last.
Carl von Clausewitz
Only the element of chance is needed to make war a gamble, and that element is never absent.
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
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy's power to frustrate it.
Carl von Clausewitz
Obstinacy is a fault of temperament. Stubbornness and intolerance of contradiction result from a special kind of egotism, which elevates above everything else the pleasure of its autonomous intellect, to which others must bow.
Carl von Clausewitz
Politics is the womb in which war develops.
Carl von Clausewitz
The best strategy is always to be very strong.
Carl von Clausewitz
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
Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.
Carl von Clausewitz
