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A conqueror is always a lover of peace.

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
Conqueror
Lover
Lovers
Peace
Always

More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz

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Politics is the womb in which war develops.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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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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.
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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
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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
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In War, the young soldier is very apt to regard unusual fatigues as the consquence of faults, mistakes, and embarrassment in the conduct of the whole, and to become distressed and depondent as a consequence. This would not happen if he had been prepared for this beforehand by exercises in peace.
Carl von Clausewitz
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There is only one decisive victory: the last.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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
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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
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Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.
Carl von Clausewitz
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The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.
Carl von Clausewitz
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In war everything is simple, but it's the simple things that are difficult.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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A general who allows himself to be decisively defeated in an extended mountain position deserves to be court-martialled.
Carl von Clausewitz
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The difficulty of accurate recognition constitutes one of the most serious sources of friction in war, by making things appear entirely different from what one had expected.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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
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Tactics is the art of using troops in battle strategy is the art of using battles to win the war
Carl von Clausewitz
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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.
Carl von Clausewitz