Carl von Clausewitz Quotes

Every great general and warrior from the beginning of time was high.

Strategy is the most important department of the art of war, and strategical skill is the highest and rarest function of military genius.

I have much to teach you. Come and learn the art of war from the one who invented it. (Takeshi)

Chess is a more highly symbolic game, but the aggressions are therefore even more frankly represented in the play. It probably began as a war game; that is, the representation of a miniature battle between the forces of two kingdoms

In all their wars against the French they [the Americans] never showed such conduct, attention and perseverance as they do now.

The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.

In tactics, action is the governing rule of war.

In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.

Victory is the main object in war.

In war there are none but particular cases; everything has there an individual nature; nothing ever repeats itself. In the first place, the data of a military problem are but seldom certain; they are never final . Everything is in a constant state of change and reshaping.

Where execution is dominant, as it is in the individual events of a war whether great or small, then intellectual factors are reduced to a minimum.

Warfare is the father of all good things, it is also the father of good prose!

For Americans war is almost all of the time a nuisance, and military skill is a luxury like Mah-Jongg. But when the issue is brought home to them, war becomes as important, for the necessary period, as business or sport. And it is hard to decide which is likely to be the more ominous for the Axis -- an American decision that this is sport, or that it is business.

The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.

You do have to change things as warfare changes.

Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship.

As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.

Our military sons and daughters that are placed in harm's way deserve the right equipment, the right training, and the right rules of engagement to win decisively on any field of battle.

War is delightful for those who don't know it

He that makes war without many mistakes has not made war very long.

Military glory-that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood-that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy.

You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realize just what a blundering thing Great War must be. Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but-the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is the most pacific realization conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do.

I am going to Spain to fight an army without a general, and thence to the East to fight a general without an army.

I have every confidence in the ultimate success of our joint cause; but success in modern war requires something more than courage and a willingness to die: it requires careful preparation.

There is a great Field-Marshal, my friend, who arrays our battalions; Let us to Providence trust, and abide and work in our stations.