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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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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
Make
Never
Gamble
Absent
Element
Elements
Needed
Chance
War

More quotes by Carl von Clausewitz

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Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.
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There is only one decisive victory: the last.
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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.
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In 1793 such a force as no one had any conception of made its appearance. War had again suddenly become an affair of the people, and that of a people numbering thirty millions, every one of whom regarded himself as a citizen of the State... By this participation of the people in the war... a whole Nation with its natural weight came into the scale.
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Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.
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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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...as man under pressure tends to give in to physical and intellectual weakness, only great strength of will can lead to the objective.
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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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Knowing is different from doing and therefore theory must never be used as norms for a standard, but merely as aids to judgment.
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Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.
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War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
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War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.
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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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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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The very nature of interactions is bound to make it unpredictable.
Carl von Clausewitz
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In War more than anywhere else in the world things happen differently to what we had expected, and look differently when near, to what they did at a distance.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Blind aggressiveness would destroy the attack itself, not the defense.
Carl von Clausewitz
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The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.
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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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