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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
Learned
Seeds
Noted
Study
Insight
Insights
Wisdom
Impression
Impressions
Less
Intellect
Broads
Bear
Broad
Fruit
Studies
Critical
Flash
Sown
Bears
Intuition
Flashes
More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz
Blood is the price of victory
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
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
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.
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
Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
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
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
Men are always more inclined to pitch their estimate of the enemy's strength too high than too low, such is human nature.
Carl von Clausewitz
Knowing is different from doing and therefore theory must never be used as norms for a standard, but merely as aids to judgment.
Carl von Clausewitz
Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy's power to frustrate it.
Carl von Clausewitz
War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.
Carl von Clausewitz
Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
Carl von Clausewitz
Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.
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
War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.
Carl von Clausewitz