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Blind aggressiveness would destroy the attack itself, not the defense.

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
Attack
Destroy
Defense
Blind
Would
Aggressiveness

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Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination. The bloody solution of the crisis, the effort for the destruction of the enemy's forces, is the first-born son of war. Only great and general battles can produce great results. Blood is the price of victory.
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Battles decide everything.
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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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Self-reliance is the best defence against the pressures of the moment.
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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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Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.
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What we should admire is the acute fulfillment of the unspoken assumptions, the smooth harmony of the whole activity, which only become evident in the final success.
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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Modern wars are seldom fought without hatred between nations this serves more or less as a substitute for hatred between individuals.
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Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank.
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War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.
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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.
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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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In 1793 such a force as no one had any conception of made its appearance. War had again suddenly become an affair of the people, and that of a people numbering thirty millions, every one of whom regarded himself as a citizen of the State... By this participation of the people in the war... a whole Nation with its natural weight came into the scale.
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Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, determined to find a glorious end.
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Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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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To achieve victory we must mass our forces at the hub of all power & movement. The enemy's 'Center of Gravity'
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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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Politics is the womb in which war develops - where its outlines already exist in their hidden rudimentary form, like the characteristics of living creatures in their embryos.
Carl von Clausewitz