black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

If you find your opponent in a strong position costly to force, you should leave him a line of retreat as the quickest way of loosening his resistance. It should, equally, be a principle of policy, especially in war, to provide your opponent with a ladder by which he can climb down.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Military Strong War
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
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
In war, the chief incalculable is the human will.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Marine Corps Military 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
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
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

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

Military Opponents Resistance
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
An army should always be so distributed that its parts can aid each other and combine to produce the maximum possible concentration of force at one place, while the minimum force necessary is used elsewhere to prepare the success of the concentration.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Aids Army Military
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
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Decay Military War
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
Air 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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Air Mean Military
To foster the people’s willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Important Military People

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More B. H. Liddell Hart Quotes