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Modern wars are seldom fought without hatred between nations this serves more or less as a substitute for hatred between individuals.

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
Modern
Serves
Nations
Substitute
Less
Substitutes
Individual
Fought
War
Seldom
Without
Wars
Individuals
Hatred

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There are very few men-and they are the exceptions-who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment
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Politics is the womb in which war develops.
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The more a general is accustomed to place heavy demands on his soldiers, the more he can depend on their response.
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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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Self-reliance is the best defence against the pressures of the moment.
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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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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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Tactics is the art of using troops in battle strategy is the art of using battles to win the war
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A certain grasp of military affairs is vital for those in charge of general policy.
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Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war.
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Battles decide everything.
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The very nature of interactions is bound to make it unpredictable.
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A general who allows himself to be decisively defeated in an extended mountain position deserves to be court-martialled.
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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.
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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.
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Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank.
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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.
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I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.
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Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
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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.
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