"Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed."
— Carl von Clausewitz
Kindhearted People Might Of Course Think
Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed.
About this quote
This passage from On War is Clausewitz's refutation of what he calls "philanthropic" theories of warfare — the notion that wars can be won through maneuver, siege, or clever feint without bloodshed. He insists that war is an act of force and that softening its logic leads to strategic failure: the side that embraces the full destructive potential of war will prevail over the side that does not. The argument was deeply influenced by Clausewitz's first-hand experience of the Napoleonic Wars, which revealed how total and annihilating modern warfare had become.
Source
On War, 1832