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In war, while everything is simple, even the simplest thing is difficult. Difficulties accumulate and produce frictions which no one can comprehend who has not seen war.

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
War
Comprehend
Difficult
Simplest
Everything
Difficulties
Even
Difficulty
Thing
Produce
Military
Frictions
Seen
Accumulate
Simple
Friction

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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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Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.
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War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.
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War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.
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The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.
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Blood is the price of victory
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Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.
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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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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.
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The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.
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Knowledge must become capability.
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Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination. The bloody solution of the crisis, the effort for the destruction of the enemy's forces, is the first-born son of war. Only great and general battles can produce great results. Blood is the price of victory.
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The heart of France lies between Brussels and Paris.
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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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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.
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It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition.
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Only great and general battles can produce great results
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In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.
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Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean everything is very easy.
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What we should admire is the acute fulfillment of the unspoken assumptions, the smooth harmony of the whole activity, which only become evident in the final success.
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