B.H. Liddell Hart Quotes

The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.

In war, the chief incalculable is the human will.

If you want peace, understand war.

The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.

Ensure that both plan and dispositions are flexible, adaptable to circumstances. Your plan should foresee and provide for a next step in case of success or failure.

The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.

The most effective indirect approach is one that lures or startles the opponent into a false move - so that, as in ju-jitsu, his own effort is turned into the lever of his overthrow.

The downfall of civilized states tends to come not from the direct assaults of foes, but from internal decay combined with the consequences of exhaustion in war.

A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.

For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.

Air Power is, above all, a psychological weapon - and only short-sighted soldiers, too battle-minded, underrate the importance of psychological factors in war.

Guerrilla war is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many.

In the case of a state that is seeking not conquest but the maintenance of its security, the aim is fulfilled if the threat is removed - if the enemy is led to abandon his purpose.

Inflict the least possible permanent injury, for the enemy of to-day is the customer of the morrow and the ally of the future

Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.

Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.

The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.

To foster the people's willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power.

War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.

With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.

It is thus more potent, as well as more economical, to disarm the enemy than to attempt his destruction by hard fighting ... A strategist should think in terms of paralysing, not of killing.

No man can exactly calculate the capacity of human genius and stupidity, nor the incapacity of will.

In reality, it si more fruitful to wound than to kill. While the dead man lies still, counting only one man less, the wounded man is a progressive drain upon his side.

The unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success.

The military weapon is but one of the means that serve the purposes of war: one out of the assortment which grand strategy can employ.

Every action is seen to fall into one of three main categories, guarding, hitting, or moving. Here, then, are the elements of combat, whether in war or pugilism.

The nearer the cutting off point lies to the main force of the enemy, the more immediate the effect; whereas the closer to the strategic base it takes place, the greater the effect.

While hitting one must guard ... In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.

The higher level of grand strategy [is] that of conducting war with a far-sighted regard to the state of the peace that will follow.

It is only to clear from history that states rarely keep faith with each other, save in so far (and so long) as their promises seem to them to combine with their interests.

The effect to be sought is the dislocation of the opponent's mind and dispositions - such an effect is the true gauge of an indirect approach.

For even the best of peace training is more theoretical than practical experience ... indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider.

For the spread and endurance of an idea the originator is dependent on the self-development of the receivers and transmitters.

Avoid self-righteousness like the devil- nothing is so self-blinding.

The search for the truth for truth's sake is the mark of the historian.

If you wish for peace, understand war.

The practical value of history is to throw the film of the past through the material projector of the present on to the screen of the future.

The implied threat of using nuclear weapons to curb guerrillas was as absurd as to talk of using a sledge hammer to ward off a swarm of mosquitoes.

As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.

The urge to gain release from tension by action is a precipitating cause of war.

The historian's rightful task is to distil experience as a medicinal warning for the future generations, not to distil a drug.

Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.

Keep strong if possible in any case keep cool.