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Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, determined to find a glorious end.

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
Plans
Persevering
Ends
Audacious
Find
Cunning
Execution
Perseverance
Glorious
Firm
Determined

More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz

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Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank.
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Only great and general battles can produce great results
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Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.
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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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Just as some plants bear fruit only if they don't shoot up too high, so in practical arts the leaves and flowers of theory must be pruned and the plant kept close to its proper soil- experience.
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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.
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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 not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
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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 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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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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The best strategy is always to be very strong.
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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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Blind aggressiveness would destroy the attack itself, not the defense.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.
Carl von Clausewitz
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The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.
Carl von Clausewitz
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No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy
Carl von Clausewitz
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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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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