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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.

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
Judgment
Therefore
Norms
Theory
Norm
Knowing
Standard
Used
Aids
Must
Merely
Different
Never
Standards

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War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
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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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The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.
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Blood is the price of victory
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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 times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom.
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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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The best strategy is always to be very strong.
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War is the province of danger.
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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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The heart of France lies between Brussels and Paris.
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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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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.
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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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Blind aggressiveness would destroy the attack itself, not the defense.
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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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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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Battles decide everything.
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The very nature of interactions is bound to make it unpredictable.
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