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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

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
With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Growing Military Offensive
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
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 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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Effort Military Moving
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
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 HART

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

Military Opponents Resistance
For even the best of peace training is more theoretical than practical experience … indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

May Military Training
The urge to gain release from tension by action is a precipitating cause of war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Causes Gains War
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.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Film Materials Past
The search for the truth for truth’s sake is the mark of the historian.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Historian Mark Sake
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
If you want peace, understand war.
B. H. LIDDELL HART

Peace Want 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 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

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