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A general who allows himself to be decisively defeated in an extended mountain position deserves to be court-martialled.

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
Deserve
General
Decisively
Position
Extended
Deserves
Defeated
Allows
Court
Mountain

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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.
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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 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.
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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.
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In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.
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Self-reliance is the best defence against the pressures of the moment.
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In war everything is simple, but it's the simple things that are difficult.
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Tactics is the art of using troops in battle strategy is the art of using battles to win the war
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Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.
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The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.
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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.
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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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Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
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To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy's power to frustrate it.
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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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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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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.
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Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.
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Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean everything is very easy.
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