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

B. H. Liddell Hart

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

Men Military Stupidity
The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Dangerous Errors Tendencies
Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Issues Loss War
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Mean Military War
A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Bars Pursuit Satisfaction
If you wish for peace, understand war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Peace War Wish
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Power Truth War
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Fighting Military Thinking
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Belief Demand Military
If you want peace, understand war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Peace Want War
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Level Military War
Natural hazards, however formidable, are inherently less dangerous and less uncertain than fighting hazards. All conditions are more calculable, all obstacles more surmountable than those of human resistance.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Fighting Hazards Military
In war, the chief incalculable is the human will.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Marine Corps Military War
The more closely [the German army] converged on [Stalingrad], the narrower became their scope for tactical manoeuvre as a lever in loosening resistance. By contrast, the narrowing of the frontage made it easier for the defender to switch his local reserves to any threatened point on the defensive arc.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Army Levers Military
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Hammers Military Mosquitoes
To ensure attaining an objective, one should have alternate objectives. An attack that converges on one point should threaten, and be able to diverge against another. Only by this flexibility of aim can strategy be attuned to the uncertainty of war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Military War

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

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

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