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There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom.

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
Utmost
Daring
Height
Wisdom
Times

More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz

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Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.
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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War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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The very nature of interactions is bound to make it unpredictable.
Carl von Clausewitz
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In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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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Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean everything is very easy.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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.
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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War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.
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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Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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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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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War is an act of force, and to the application of that force there is no limit. Each of the adversaries forces the hand of the other, and a reciprocal action results which in theory can have no limit.
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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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