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Blood is the price of victory

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
Price
Victory
Military
Blood

More quotes by 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.
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Knowledge must become capability.
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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.
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Battles decide everything.
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To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy's power to frustrate it.
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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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If we do not learn to regard a war, and the separate campaigns of which it is composed, as a chain of linked engagements each leading to the next, but instead succumb to the idea that the capture of certain geographical points or the seizure of undefended provinces are of value in themselves, we are liable to regard them as windfall profits.
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War is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others.
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Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean everything is very easy.
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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.
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In the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.
Carl von Clausewitz
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A certain grasp of military affairs is vital for those in charge of general policy.
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.
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Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.
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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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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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Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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
Carl von Clausewitz
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War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
Carl von Clausewitz