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There is only one decisive victory: the last.

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
Last
Decisive
Victory
Military
Lasts

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Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.
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Blood is the price of victory
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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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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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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.
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We shall not enter into any of the abstruse definitions of war used by publicists. We shall keep to the element of the thing itself, to a duel. War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale.
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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.
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War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.
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Men are always more inclined to pitch their estimate of the enemy's strength too high than too low, such is human nature.
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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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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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Only great and general battles can produce great results
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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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Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.
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There are very few men-and they are the exceptions-who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment
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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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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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To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy's power to frustrate it.
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We repeat again: strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them. Even with the violence of emotion, judgment and principle must still function like a ship’s compass, which records the slightest variations however rough the sea.
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The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.
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