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The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.

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
War
Art
View
Highest
Policy
Views
Point

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Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.
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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
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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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The best strategy is always to be very strong.
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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.
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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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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.
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War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Whenever armed forces . . . are used, the idea of combat must be present. . . . The end for which a soldier is recruited, clothed, armed, and trained, the whole object of his sleeping, eating, drinking, and marching is simply that he should fight at the right place and the right time.
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The heart of France lies between Brussels and Paris.
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Battles decide everything.
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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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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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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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To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy's power to frustrate it.
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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The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation form their purposes.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Blind aggressiveness would destroy the attack itself, not the defense.
Carl von Clausewitz
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It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.
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