Inflict the least possible permanent injury, for the enemy of to-day is the customer of the morrow and the ally of the future
B. H. LIDDELL HARTAir forces offered the possibility of striking a the enemy’s economic and moral centres without having first to achieve ‘the destruction of the enemy’s main forces on the battlefield’. Air-power might attain a direct end by indirect means – hopping over opposition instead of overthrowing it.
More B. H. Liddell Hart Quotes
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The more usual reason for adopting a strategy of limited aim is that of awaiting a change in the balance of force … The essential condition of such a strategy is that the drain on him should be disproportionately greater than on oneself.
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Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.
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It is folly to imagine that the aggressive types, whether individuals or nations, can be bought off … since the payment of danegeld stimulates a demand for more danegeld. But they can be curbed. Their very belief in force makes them more susceptible to the deterrent effect of a formidable opposing force.
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A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.
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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.
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The hydrogen bomb is not the answer to the Western peoples’ dream of full and final insurance of their security … While it has increased their striking power it has sharpened their anxiety and deepened their sense of insecurity.
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The search for the truth for truth’s sake is the mark of the historian.
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As has happened so often in history, victory had bred a complacency and fostered an orthodoxy which led to defeat in the next war.
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With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.
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The predominance of moral factors in all military decisions. On them constantly turns the issue of war and battle. In the history of war they form the more constant factors, changing only in degree, whereas the physical factors are different in almost every war and every military situation.
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The unexpected cannot guarantee success, but it guarantees the best chance of success.
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A modern state is such a complex and interdependent fabric that it offers a target highly sensitive to a sudden and overwhelming blow from the air.
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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.
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The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.
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War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.
B. H. LIDDELL HART






