Top 120 Carl von Clausewitz Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “The difficulty of accurate recognition constitutes one of the most serious sources of friction in war, by making things appear entirely different from what one had expected.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

102. “Action in war is like movement in a resistant element. Just as the simplest and most natural of movements, walking, cannot easily be performed in water, so in war, it is difficult for normal efforts to achieve even moderate results.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

103. “We shall not enter into any of the abstruse definitions of war used by publicists. We shall keep to the element of the thing itself, to a duel. War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

104. “Blind aggressiveness would destroy the attack itself, not the defense.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

105. “War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

106. “The deduction of effect from cause is often blocked by some insuperable extrinsic obstacle: the true causes may be quite unknown. Nowhere in life is this so common as in war, where the facts are seldom fully known and the underlying motives even less so.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

107. “What we should admire is the acute fulfillment of the unspoken assumptions, the smooth harmony of the whole activity, which only become evident in the final success.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

108. “In War, the young soldier is very apt to regard unusual fatigues as the consquence of faults, mistakes, and embarrassment in the conduct of the whole, and to become distressed and depondent as a consequence. This would not happen if he had been prepared for this beforehand by exercises in peace.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

109. “As long as the enemy is not defeated, he may defeat me; then I shall be no longer my own master; he will dictate the law to me as I did to him.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

110. “Theory must also take into account the human element; it must accord a place to courage, to boldness, even to rashness.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

111. “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.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

112. “We maintain, on the contrary, that war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means. We deliberately use the phrase “with the addition of other means” because we also want to make it clear that war in itself does not suspend political intercourse or change it into something entirely different. In essentials that intercourse continues, irrespective of the means it employs.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

113. “If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

114. “Modern wars are seldom fought without hatred between nations; this serves more or less as a substitute for hatred between individuals.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

115. “Der Krieg ist nichts als eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs mit Einmischung anderer Mittel. War is merely the continuation of policy with the admixture of other means.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

116. “In the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

117. “No other human activity is so continuously or universally bound up with chance. And through the element of chance, guesswork and luck come to play a great part in war.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

118. “Just as some plants bear fruit only if they don’t shoot up too high, so in practical arts the leaves and flowers of theory must be pruned and the plant kept close to its proper soil- experience.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

119. “All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

120. “There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

121. “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.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

122. “Only great and general battles can produce great results.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

123. “Of all the passions that inspire a man in a battle, none, we have to admit, is so powerful and so constant as the longing for honor and reknown.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

124. “A general who allows himself to be decisively defeated in an extended mountain position deserves to be court-martialled.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

125. “Strategy can therefore never take its hand from the work for a moment.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

126. “If our opponent is to be made to comply with our will, we must place him in a situation which is more oppressive to him than the sacrifice which we demand; but the disadvantages of this position must naturally not be of a transitory nature, at least in appearance, otherwise the enemy, instead of yielding, will hold out, in the prospect of a change for the better.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

127. “All thinking is indeed Art. Where the logician draws the line, where the premises stop which are the result of cognition – where judgment begins, there Art begins. But more than this even the perception of the mind is judgment again, and consequently Art; and at last, even the perception by the senses as well.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

128. “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?”

— Carl von Clausewitz

129. “The more a general is accustomed to place heavy demands on his soldiers, the more he can depend on their response.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

130. “Von der Goltz in excuse for the action of the late President Kruger in 1899: “The Statesman who, knowing his instrument to be ready, and seeing War inevitable, hesitates to strike first is guilty of a crime against his country.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

131. “PRINCIPLE is likewise such a law for action, except that it has not the formal definite meaning, but is only the spirit and sense of law in order to leave the judgment more freedom of application when the diversity of the real world cannot be laid hold of under the definite form of a law.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

132. “If we then ask what sort of mind is likeliest to display the qualities of military genius, experience and observation will both tell us that it is the inquiring rather than the creative mind, the comprehensive rather than the specialized approach, the calm rather than the excitable head to which in war we would choose to entrust...”

— Carl von Clausewitz

133. “Truth in itself is rarely sufficient to make men act. Hence the step is always long from cognition to volition, from knowledge to ability. The most powerful springs of action in men lie in his emotions. He derives his most vigorous support, if we may use the term, from that blend of brains and temperament which we have learned to recognize in the qualities of determination, firmness, staunchness, and strength of character.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

134. “Out of the whole multitude of prudent men in the world, the great majority are so from timidity.”

— Carl von Clausewitz

135. “The errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are the worst.”

— Carl von Clausewitz