Top 120 Carl von Clausewitz Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

Featured in: Strategy Quotes, Military Quotes

2. “The best form of defense is attack.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

Featured in: Strategy Quotes, Warrior Quotes, Quotes About War

3. “Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

Featured in: Strategy Quotes

4. “To secure peace is to prepare for war.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

Featured in: Military Quotes

5. “Knowledge must become capability.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

6. “Talent and genius operate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with practice.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

Featured in: Genius Quotes

7. “There is only one decisive victory: the last.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

Featured in: Strategy Quotes, Victory Quotes, Quotes About War

8. “It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

Featured in: Military Quotes, Achievement Quotes

9. “Blood is the price of victory.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

10. “No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

11. “War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

12. “No one starts a war – or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so – without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by the war and how he intends to conduct it.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

13. “By ‘intelligence’ we mean every sort of information about the enemy and his country – the basis, in short, of our own plans and operations.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

14. “War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

15. “There are very few men-and they are the exceptions-who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

16. “Knowing is different from doing and therefore theory must never be used as norms for a standard, but merely as aids to judgment.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

17. “Every age has its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions and its own peculiar preconceptions.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

18. “Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

19. “Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

20. “War is politics by other means.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

21. “Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

22. “Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

23. “The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

24. “Self-reliance is the best defence against the pressures of the moment.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

25. “War is merely the continuation of politics by other means.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

26. “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.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

27. “The best strategy is always to be very strong.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

Featured in: Strong Quotes

28. “Be audacious and cunning in your plans, firm and persevering in their execution, determined to find a glorious end.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

29. “Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

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

— Carl von Clausewitz

31. “The world has a way of undermining complex plans. This is particularly true in fast moving environments. A fast moving environment can evolve more quickly than a complex plan can be adapted to it. By the time you have adapted, the target has changed.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

32. “Where absolute superiority is not attainable, you must produce a relative one at the decisive point by making skillful use ofwhat you have.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

33. “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.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

34. “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.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

35. “Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

36. “Boldness governed by superior intellect is the mark of a hero.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

37. “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...”

— Carl von Clausewitz

38. “The more a leader is in the habit of demanding from his men, the surer he will be that his demands will be answered.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

39. “If you entrench yourself behind strong fortifications, you compel the enemy seek a solution elsewhere.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

Featured in: Strong Quotes

40. “Criticism exists only to recognize the truth, not to act as judge.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

Featured in: Judging Quotes

41. “War should never be thought of as something autonomous, but always as an instrument of policy.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

42. “Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

43. “A conqueror is always a lover of peace.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

44. “There are cases in which the greatest daring is the greatest wisdom.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

45. “Battles decide everything.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

46. “The side that feels the lesser urge for peace will naturally get the better bargain.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

47. “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.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

48. “Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

49. “The art of war in its highest point of view is policy.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

50. “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.”

— Carl von Clausewitz