Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Critical
Flash
Sown
Bears
Intuition
Flashes
Learned
Seeds
Noted
Study
Insight
Insights
Wisdom
Impression
Impressions
Less
Intellect
Broads
Bear
Broad
Fruit
Studies
More quotes by 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
Battles decide everything.
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
Every combat is the bloody and destructive measuring of the strength of forces, physical and moral whoever at the close has the greatest amount of both left is the conqueror.
Carl von Clausewitz
Modern wars are seldom fought without hatred between nations this serves more or less as a substitute for hatred between individuals.
Carl von Clausewitz
Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.
Carl von Clausewitz
War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.
Carl von Clausewitz
Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean everything is very easy.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
There is only one decisive victory: the last.
Carl von Clausewitz
Only the element of chance is needed to make war a gamble, and that element is never absent.
Carl von Clausewitz
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
It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.
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
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.
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
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
The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.
Carl von Clausewitz
A general who allows himself to be decisively defeated in an extended mountain position deserves to be court-martialled.
Carl von Clausewitz
There are very few men-and they are the exceptions-who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment
Carl von Clausewitz