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The very nature of interactions is bound to make it unpredictable.
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
Bounds
Nature
Make
Interactions
Unpredictable
Interaction
Bound
More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz
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
The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.
Carl von Clausewitz
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
Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.
Carl von Clausewitz
Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
Carl von Clausewitz
The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.
Carl von Clausewitz
All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.
Carl von Clausewitz
War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.
Carl von Clausewitz
Battles decide everything.
Carl von Clausewitz
War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.
Carl von Clausewitz
Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.
Carl von Clausewitz
...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
In the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.
Carl von Clausewitz
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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
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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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
Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, determined to find a glorious end.
Carl von Clausewitz
The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.
Carl von Clausewitz
Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank.
Carl von Clausewitz
