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Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.

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
Remedies
Remedy
Affairs
Require
Desperate
Affair

More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz

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What we should admire is the acute fulfillment of the unspoken assumptions, the smooth harmony of the whole activity, which only become evident in the final success.
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The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.
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Self-reliance is the best defence against the pressures of the moment.
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There is only one decisive victory: the last.
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War is the province of danger.
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A conqueror is always a lover of peace.
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Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.
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There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom.
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It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.
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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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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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War is only caused through the political intercourse of governments and nations - war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of other means.
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Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
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The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.
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A general who allows himself to be decisively defeated in an extended mountain position deserves to be court-martialled.
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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.
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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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War is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Intelligence alone is not courage, we often see that the most intelligent people are irresolute. Since in the rush of events a man is governed by feelings rather than by thought, the intellect needs to arouse the quality of courage, which then supports and sustains it in action.
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