Posted on 04/25/2002 6:39:50 PM PDT by PsyOp
Carl Phillip Gottleib von Clausewitz (1780-1831) was a Prussian soldier and intellectual. He came from a humble social background, though his family claimed nobility. He served as a practical field soldier (with extensive combat experience against the armies of the French Revolution and Napoleon), as a staff officer with political/military responsibilities at the very center of the Prussian state, and as a prominent military educator. Clausewitz first entered combat as a cadet at the age of 13, rose to the rank of Major-General at 38, married into the high nobility, moved in rarefied intellectual cirles in Berlin, and wrote a book which has become the most influential work of military philosophy in the Western world.
Sorry to have confused you. We were actually discussing Machiavelli, and his book The Art of War, not Clausewitz (I posted a list of his quotations earlier this week). I am well aware of the Baron's military experience - but good addition to the thread anyway.
Hmmmm..... your depleating my read budget for this week bro....back to the book store in the AM for sure if he's written text of the same title.
Thanks for the great quotes. Do you collect em or have a secret stash of em somewhere you draw from ?
Stay Safe and again Thank You !
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?
Will Rogers
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.
John Updike
If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
Laurence J. Peter
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
Ronald Reagan
I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
Mark Twain
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.
E. B. White
On my income tax 1040 it says 'Check this box if you are blind.' I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away.
Tom Lehrer, lecturing in "The Nature of Math", 4/4/90
Dealing with network executives is like being nibbled to death by ducks.
Eric Sevareid
The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.
Sam Levenson
It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
Charles Baudelaire
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell, "Animal Farm"
We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
H. L. Mencken
Stay Safe !
Both wrote a book by the same name. You can add Jomini, too.
Stay Safe !
I have that problem, too. That's why I put my favorites in a printable data-base.
Depending to which echelon you speak to, this was not neccessarily a good thing! LOL! REMF's!
Most of Clauswitz is a restatement of the obvious in an unclear writing style.
Perhaps you should read a better translation.
As for it being the “obvious”... if it were, there would be far less stupidity dictating world affairs.
If it were obvious, we’d have far more countries actively support the WOT and fighting against Izlamo Fascism.
It may be obvious to you and me, but it would be a mistake to think we are in the majority.
btt
Brought up to date.
It is only aggression that calls forth defense, and war along with it. The aggressor is always peace-loving (as Islam always claimed to be); it would prefer to take over our country unopposed. To prevent it’s doing so one must be willing to make war and be prepared for it. In other words it is the weak, those likely to need defense, who should always be armed in order not to be overwhelmed. Thus decrees the art of war. - Karl von Clauswitz, On War, 1832.
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