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Quotes by Karl Von Clausewitz

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.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen war.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
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.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
Politics is the womb in which war develops.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
Principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
The difficulty of accurate recognition constitutes one of the most serious sources of friction in war... War has a way of masking the stage with scenery crudely daubed with fearsome appartions.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
The more a general is accustomed to place heavy demands on his soldiers, the more he can depend on their response.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
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.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
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.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
War is not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
War is the province of danger.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
What this task requires in the way of higher intellectual gifts is a sense of unity and a power of judgement, raised to a marvelous pitch of vision, which easily grasps and dismisses a thousand remote possibilities an ordinary mind would labor to identify, and wear itself out in doing so.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
To secure peace is to prepare for war.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.
– Karl Von Clausewitz
A conqueror is always a lover of peace.
– Karl Von Clausewitz