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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

More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz

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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.
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War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.
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The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.
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Rather than comparing [war] to art we could more accurately compare it to commerce, which is also a conflict of human interests and activities and it is still closer to politics, which in turn may be considered as a kind of commerce on a larger scale.
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Battles decide everything.
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There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom.
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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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The best strategy is always to be very strong.
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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.
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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.
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War is an act of force, and to the application of that force there is no limit. Each of the adversaries forces the hand of the other, and a reciprocal action results which in theory can have no limit.
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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.
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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.
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Knowledge must become capability.
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The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.
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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.
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War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
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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.
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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.
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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