Carl von Clausewitz - Mind Quotes

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Great things alone can make a great mind, and petty things will make a petty mind unless a man rejects them as completely alien.

Carl von Clausewitz
Our knowledge of circumstances has increased, but our uncertainty, instead of having diminished, has only increased. The reason of this is, that we do not gain all our experience at once, but by degrees; so our determinations continue to be assailed incessantly by fresh experience; and the mind, if we may use the expression, must always be under arms.

Carl von Clausewitz
Architects and painters know precisely what they are about as long as they deal with material phenomena. … But when they come to the aesthetics of their work, when they aim at a particular effect on the mind or on the senses, the rules dissolve into nothing but vague ideas.

Carl von Clausewitz
If we read history with an open mind, we cannot fail to conclude that, among all the military virtues, the energetic conduct of war has always contributed most to glory and success.

Carl von Clausewitz
Knowledge must be so absorbed into the mind that it ceases to exist in a separate, objective way. [...] in 1797 the secret of the effectiveness of resisting to the last had not yet been discovered.

Carl von Clausewitz
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 truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.

Carl von Clausewitz
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
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.

Carl von Clausewitz
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