Quote

In war everything is simple, but it's the simple things that are difficult.

Carl von Clausewitz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Everything
Things
Simple
War
Difficult
Art

More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz

Image
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
Image
In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.
Carl von Clausewitz
Image
Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.
Carl von Clausewitz
Image
War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.
Carl von Clausewitz
Image
Politics is the womb in which war develops - where its outlines already exist in their hidden rudimentary form, like the characteristics of living creatures in their embryos.
Carl von Clausewitz
Image
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
Image
In War more than anywhere else in the world things happen differently to what we had expected, and look differently when near, to what they did at a distance.
Carl von Clausewitz
Image
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
Image
Battles decide everything.
Carl von Clausewitz
Image
Modern wars are seldom fought without hatred between nations this serves more or less as a substitute for hatred between individuals.
Carl von Clausewitz
Image
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
Image
Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
Carl von Clausewitz
Image
There are very few men-and they are the exceptions-who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment
Carl von Clausewitz
Image
Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.
Carl von Clausewitz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy's power to frustrate it.
Carl von Clausewitz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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