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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.
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
Fruit
Studies
Critical
Flash
Sown
Bears
Intuition
Flashes
Learned
Seeds
Noted
Study
Insight
Insights
Wisdom
Impression
Impressions
Less
Intellect
Broads
Bear
Broad
More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
With uncertainty in one scale, courage and self-confidence should be thrown into the other to correct the balance. The greater they are, the greater the margin that can be left for accidents.
Carl von Clausewitz
There is only one decisive victory: the last.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
In 1793 such a force as no one had any conception of made its appearance. War had again suddenly become an affair of the people, and that of a people numbering thirty millions, every one of whom regarded himself as a citizen of the State... By this participation of the people in the war... a whole Nation with its natural weight came into the scale.
Carl von Clausewitz
War is the province of danger.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
Carl von Clausewitz
The more a general is accustomed to place heavy demands on his soldiers, the more he can depend on their response.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, determined to find a glorious end.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean everything is very easy.
Carl von Clausewitz
Whenever armed forces . . . are used, the idea of combat must be present. . . . The end for which a soldier is recruited, clothed, armed, and trained, the whole object of his sleeping, eating, drinking, and marching is simply that he should fight at the right place and the right time.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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
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
War is only caused through the political intercourse of governments and nations - war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of other means.
Carl von Clausewitz
