Carl von Clausewitz Quotes

After all, it is not nice going to war with one’s equal or possible superior in strength – so different from those delightful “military operations” which consist in “potting”, savages with an amount of danger just sufficient to give a zest to the sport …But then the special line the skill of our ablest and most valiant generals takes is that of “thrashing a cannibal.” Thrashing a Cossack is a different sort of thing.

War seems to be one of the most salutary phenomena for the culture of human nature; and it is not without regret that I see it disappearing more and more from the scene.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

Terrour ... makes short warres

War is capitalism with the gloves off …

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything, I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The Ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more disputes in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

War had always seemed to me to be a purely human behavior. Accounts of warlike behavior date back to the very first written records of human history; it seemed to be an almost universal characteristic of human groups.

War is the science of destruction.

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.

I think its man's nature to go to war and fight.

Whether one believes in evolution, intelligent design, or Divine Creation, one thing is certain. Since the beginning of history, human beings have been at war with each other, under the pretext of religion, ideology, ethnicity and other reasons. And no civilization has ever willingly given up its most powerful weapons.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it.

This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

War is the trade of Kings.

The State thrives on war - unless, of course, it is defeated and crushed - expands on it, glories in it.

War is the ultimate tool of politics.

War does horrible things to human beings, to societies. It brings out the best, but most often the worst, in our human nature.

Either war is obsolete, or men are.

War was forced upon mankind in his original civil and social condition.

The old saying that war is a racket has taken on an even more shameful meaning.

Remember that politics, colonialism, imperialism and war also originate in the human brain.