Quote #51
All war presupposes human weakness and seeks to exploit it.
Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.
More from Karl von Clausewitz
- The state of crisis is the real war; the equilibrium is nothing but its reflex.
- If defense is the stronger form of war, yet has a negative object, it follows that it should be used only so long as weakness compels, and …
- ...any move made in a state of tension will be of more important, and will have more results, than it would have made in a state of eqilibr…
- Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical super…
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- Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.
- Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates; neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.
- In such dangerous things as war the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are the worst things.