Karl Clausewitz Quotes on Mind (3 Quotes)

Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind. The difference lies not in the respective natures of savagery and civilization, but in their attendant circumstances, institutions, and so forth. The difference, therefore, does not operate in every sense, but it does in most of them. Even the most civilized peoples, in short, can be fired with passionate hatred for each other.

If the mind is to emerge unscathed from this relentless struggle with the unforeseen, two qualities are indispensable first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to the truth and second, the courage to follow this light wherever it may lead.

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.