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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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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
Conflict
Military
Interest
War
Others
Great
Bloodshed
Different
Settled
Interests

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Self-reliance is the best defence against the pressures of the moment.
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There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom.
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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.
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Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.
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The very nature of interactions is bound to make it unpredictable.
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Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war.
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Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank.
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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.
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Every combat is the bloody and destructive measuring of the strength of forces, physical and moral whoever at the close has the greatest amount of both left is the conqueror.
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No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy
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There is only one decisive victory: the last.
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The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.
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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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A certain grasp of military affairs is vital for those in charge of general policy.
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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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Blood is the price of victory
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Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
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A conqueror is always a lover of peace.
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In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.
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Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
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