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.
B. H. LIDDELL HARTEvery 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.
More B. H. Liddell Hart Quotes
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Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.
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For the spread and endurance of an idea the originator is dependent on the self-development of the receivers and transmitters.
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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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART -
No man can exactly calculate the capacity of human genius and stupidity, nor the incapacity of will.
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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.
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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 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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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.
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The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.
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In strategy the longest way round is often the shortest way there- a direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, whereas an indirect approach loosens the defender’s hold by upsetting his balance.
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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.
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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.
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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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Air Power is, above all, a psychological weapon – and only short-sighted soldiers, too battle-minded, underrate the importance of psychological factors in war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART