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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

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Only great and general battles can produce great results
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The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.
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Tactics is the art of using troops in battle strategy is the art of using battles to win the war
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Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.
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Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean everything is very easy.
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Men are always more inclined to pitch their estimate of the enemy's strength too high than too low, such is human nature.
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Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.
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The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.
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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.
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...as man under pressure tends to give in to physical and intellectual weakness, only great strength of will can lead to the objective.
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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.
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War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.
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Intelligence alone is not courage, we often see that the most intelligent people are irresolute. Since in the rush of events a man is governed by feelings rather than by thought, the intellect needs to arouse the quality of courage, which then supports and sustains it in action.
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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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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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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
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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.
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War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
Carl von Clausewitz
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The very nature of interactions is bound to make it unpredictable.
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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