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Battles decide everything.

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
Everything
Battles
Decide
Battle

More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz

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War is the province of danger.
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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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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Only the element of chance is needed to make war a gamble, and that element is never absent.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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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Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, determined to find a glorious end.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Responsibility and danger do not tend to free or stimulate the average person's mind- rather the contrary but wherever they do liberate an individual's judgement and confidence we can be sure that we are in the presence of exceptional ability.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Men are always more inclined to pitch their estimate of the enemy's strength too high than too low, such is human nature.
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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Knowledge must become capability.
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
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War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
Carl von Clausewitz
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A conqueror is always a lover of peace.
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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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
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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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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.
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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...as man under pressure tends to give in to physical and intellectual weakness, only great strength of will can lead to the objective.
Carl von Clausewitz