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Self-reliance is the best defence against the pressures of the moment.

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
Pressure
Moment
Moments
Best
Self
Pressures
Defence
Reliance

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Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
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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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Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination. The bloody solution of the crisis, the effort for the destruction of the enemy's forces, is the first-born son of war. Only great and general battles can produce great results. Blood is the price of victory.
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The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.
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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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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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Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.
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It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.
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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.
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In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.
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The heart of France lies between Brussels and Paris.
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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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Only great and general battles can produce great results
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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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A conqueror is always a lover of peace.
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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.
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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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In war, while everything is simple, even the simplest thing is difficult. Difficulties accumulate and produce frictions which no one can comprehend who has not seen war.
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Battles decide everything.
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Just as some plants bear fruit only if they don't shoot up too high, so in practical arts the leaves and flowers of theory must be pruned and the plant kept close to its proper soil- experience.
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