Karl Clausewitz Quotes (5 Quotes)

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 apparitions.

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.

Lastly, the great uncertainty of all data in War is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently - like the effect of a fog or moonshine - gives to things exagg.

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.