Quote

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

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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
Results
Intolerance
Special
Bows
Pleasure
Temperament
Others
Contradiction
Elevates
Else
Fault
Obstinacy
Everything
Intellect
Stubbornness
Must
Faults
Autonomous
Kind
Result
Egotism

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War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.
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Only great and general battles can produce great results
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War is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others.
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Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.
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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.
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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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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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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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There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom.
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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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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.
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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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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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Tactics is the art of using troops in battle strategy is the art of using battles to win the war
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Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.
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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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With uncertainty in one scale, courage and self-confidence should be thrown into the other to correct the balance. The greater they are, the greater the margin that can be left for accidents.
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Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.
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