209 Quotes by Carl von Clausewitz

Given the same amount of intelligence, timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity.

The great uncertainty of all data in war is because all action, to a certain extent, planned in a mere twilight – like the effect of a fog – gives things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance.

War is an act of force, and to the application of that force there is no limit. Each of the adversaries forces the hand of the other, and a reciprocal action results which in theory can have no limit...

Politics is the womb in which war develops – where its outlines already exist in their hidden rudimentary form, like the characteristics of living creatures in their embryos.

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.

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.

For political and social as well as for military reasons the preferred way of bringing about victory was the shortest, most direct way, and that meant using all possible force.

War is only caused through the political intercourse of governments and nations – war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of other means.

But everything takes a different shape when we pass from abstractions to reality. In the former, everything must be subject to optimism, and we must imagine the one side as well as the other striving after perfection and even attaining it. Will this ever take place in reality?