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 HARTGuerrilla war is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many.
More B. H. Liddell Hart Quotes
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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 -
The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error.
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The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.
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 -
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 -
In should be the duty of every soldier to reflect on the experiences of the past, in the endeavor to discover improvements, in his particular sphere of action, which are practicable in the immediate future.
B. H. LIDDELL HART -
I used to think that the causes of war were predominantly economic. I came to think that they were more psychological. I am now coming to think that they are decisively “personal,” arising from the defects and ambitions of those who have the power to influence the currents of nations.
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To foster the people’s willing spirit is often as important as to possess the more concrete forms of power.
B. H. LIDDELL HART -
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.
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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 -
If you wish for peace, understand war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART -
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 -
While hitting one must guard … In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.
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For whoever habitually suppresses the truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.
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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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART