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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.

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
Whole
Assumption
Final
Finals
Acute
Admire
Unspoken
Harmony
Assumptions
Activity
Evident
Success
Smooth
Become
Fulfillment

More quotes by 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.
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Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.
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War is the province of danger.
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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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I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.
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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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean everything is very easy.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Politics is the womb in which war develops.
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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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We repeat again: strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them. Even with the violence of emotion, judgment and principle must still function like a ship’s compass, which records the slightest variations however rough the sea.
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Responsibility and danger do not tend to free or stimulate the average person's mind- rather the contrary but wherever they do liberate an individual's judgement and confidence we can be sure that we are in the presence of exceptional ability.
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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
Carl von Clausewitz
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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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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.
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
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Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.
Carl von Clausewitz
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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.
Carl von Clausewitz
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Tactics is the art of using troops in battle strategy is the art of using battles to win the war
Carl von Clausewitz
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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