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

B. H. Liddell Hart

Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Military Opponents Resistance
If you want peace, understand war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Peace Want War
While hitting one must guard … In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Military Order Taken
In a campaign against more than one state or army, it is more fruitful to concentrate first against the weaker partner than to attempt the overthrow of the stronger in the belief that the latter’s defeat will automatically involve the collapse of the others.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Army Military Stronger
The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Expectation Indirect Line
For the spread and endurance of an idea the originator is dependent on the self-development of the receivers and transmitters.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Endurance Ideas Self
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
For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Military Produce
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
Guerrilla war is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Kind Support War
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Enemy Military Purpose
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Gauges Military Mind
This high proportion of history’s decisive campaigns, the significance of which is enhanced by the comparative rarity of the direct approach, enforces the conclusion that the indirect is by far the most hopeful and economic form of strategy.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Direct Approach Hopeful Military
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 HART

Allies Enemy 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
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Fall Moving War

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

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

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