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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.

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
Every
Physical
Close
Conqueror
Strength
Measuring
Amount
Bloody
Greatest
Combat
Moral
Whoever
Force
Destructive
Left
Forces

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We shall not enter into any of the abstruse definitions of war used by publicists. We shall keep to the element of the thing itself, to a duel. War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale.
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Rather than comparing [war] to art we could more accurately compare it to commerce, which is also a conflict of human interests and activities and it is still closer to politics, which in turn may be considered as a kind of commerce on a larger scale.
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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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The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation form their purposes.
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Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
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Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, determined to find a glorious end.
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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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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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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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A general who allows himself to be decisively defeated in an extended mountain position deserves to be court-martialled.
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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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A certain grasp of military affairs is vital for those in charge of general policy.
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Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean everything is very easy.
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Close combat, man to man, is plainly to be regarded as the real basis of combat.
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Only great and general battles can produce great results
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The best strategy is always to be very strong.
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The more a general is accustomed to place heavy demands on his soldiers, the more he can depend on their response.
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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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The heart of France lies between Brussels and Paris.
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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